{ "name": "Oldest pubs, graded", "description": "Every pub oldpubs.com has checked: the date it claims, the earliest date the records support, and an A/B/C grade for the evidence behind the claim.", "licence": "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)", "attribution": "oldpubs.com", "grades": "A = a record from within a generation of the claim. B = fabric of the claimed age, with no document from the time. C = no document found. C is not a finding that a claim is false — only that we could not find a record behind it.", "note": "Coordinates are deliberately absent. Most come from OpenStreetMap under the Open Database Licence, whose share-alike terms would attach to anything built from this file. For locations, use OpenStreetMap directly.", "public_sector_information": "The listed_status column contains public sector information from the National Heritage List for England, Cadw and Historic Environment Scotland, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/). Everything else in this file is ours, under the licence above.", "dates": "generated_utc is when this file was written, which happens on every deploy. data_updated is the newest date on which anybody recorded a change to a pub in it. If data_updated has not moved, nothing here has changed since you last looked, however recent generated_utc is.", "generated_utc": "2026-09-19", "data_updated": "2026-09-18", "rows": 340, "pubs": [ { "slug": "the-old-ferry-boat-inn-holywell", "name": "The Old Ferry Boat Inn", "city": "Holywell", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 560, "earliest_documented": 1841, "gap_years": 1281, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 1, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The AD 560 date is tradition only; no early documentary source has been published. The listed building is 17th-century with an older cross-wing, and a continuous run of named innkeepers is recorded only from 1841.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/ferry-boat-holywell-142984 | https://capturingcambridge.org/huntingdonshire/holywell-cum-needingworth/old-ferry-boat-inn-holywell/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Ferry_Boat_Inn | https://www.greenekinginns.co.uk/hotels/cambridgeshire/old-ferry-boat | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/hunts/pp140-142 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hunts/vol2/pp175-178 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/341252", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-ferry-boat-inn-holywell/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-fighting-cocks-st-albans", "name": "Ye Olde Fighting Cocks", "city": "St Albans", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 793, "earliest_documented": 1756, "gap_years": 963, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 2, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 793 is the pub's own claim: its website says the original structure has been dated as far back as 793AD. Historic England notes the 793 date first appears on an early-20th-century postcard. Legal papers show the old pigeon house was rebuilt as the 'Round House' by 1622; the first firm record as an alehouse (the Three Pigeons) is 1756, and the Fighting Cocks name appears by 1806.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-fighting-cocks-st-albans-192544 | https://www.stalbanshistory.org/social-history/industry/the-enigmatic-history-of-the-fighting-cocks | https://heritagecalling.com/2022/12/22/what-is-the-oldest-pub-or-inn-in-england/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Fighting_Cocks | https://www.fightingcockssa.com | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1715858", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-fighting-cocks-st-albans/" }, { "slug": "the-white-lion-inn-llanelian-yn-rhos", "name": "The White Lion Inn", "city": "Llanelian-yn-Rhos", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 800, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 20098), designated 2 July 1998", "top100_rank": 3, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1,200-year claim has been traced to one place only: a 2024 holiday-letting blog, which attributes it to the inn itself. North Wales Live gives late 14th to early 15th century. Cadw's full report, read on 17 September 2026, gives the only reading of the building by anybody with the building in front of them: the White Lion Public House, listed Grade II on 2 July 1998, is a second-quarter 19th-century inn with earlier, probably late 17th-century origins as a lateral-chimney storeyed house, of local rubble with slate roofs, forming a U-plan with a former stable or agricultural range that now opens off the bar and keeps pegged and bolted tie-beam trusses with raking queen struts. Inside the primary section are a slate-flagged floor, a stopped-chamfered main beam over the bar and a lateral fireplace with a tall opening and a cambered bressummer. Cadw designated it for its interest as a first-half 19th-century inn with an earlier core, and for its group value with St Elian's Church. So neither the 1,200 years nor the late medieval figure survives contact with the register, and both stand as tradition.", "sources": "https://www.northwalesholidaycottages.co.uk/other-information/blog/things-to-do/historic-pubs-of-north-wales/ | https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/north-waless-oldest-pubsand-ghosts-14818052 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/white-lion-inn-llanelian-yn-rhos-115819 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/230389 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=20098", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-white-lion-inn-llanelian-yn-rhos/" }, { "slug": "seans-bar-athlone", "name": "Sean's Bar", "city": "Athlone", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 900, "earliest_documented": 1738, "gap_years": 838, "building_year": 1725, "building_year_source": "National Inventory of Architectural Heritage", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NIAH recorded (reg. 15000331)", "top100_rank": 4, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 900 AD founding by Luain is tradition with no archival support. The NIAH dates the building to c.1725 and describes the wattle partitions found in the 1970s as possibly 17th-century, not 10th-century; the inn is recorded as The Three Blackamoor Heads in 1738. Guinness World Records named it Ireland's oldest pub in 2004 but reportedly no longer keeps an oldest-pub category. The present trade is on the state's own list: Revenue's register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence at 13 Main Street, Athlone, County Westmeath, under reference ATP056, held by Leinster Overview Concepts Limited and trading as Sean's Bar. That class of licence is a full public-house licence rather than a wine or restaurant one, so a drink may be had here without a meal.", "sources": "https://www.seansbar.ie/history/ | https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/15000331/seans-bar-shines-hairdressers-11-13-main-street-athlone-and-bigmeadow-athlone-county-westmeath | https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/2023/10/22/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-25-seans-bar/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean%27s_Bar | https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/2026/07/30/a-guide-to-the-sessions-of-feile-na-sionainne-2026/ | https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/2025/05/22/athlone-wins-on-the-double-as-seans-bar-and-thyme-triumph-at-restaurant-awards/ | https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/2024/10/23/seans-bar-in-athlone-to-close-as-mark-of-respect-after-death-of-our-friend-and-owner/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/seans-bar-athlone/" }, { "slug": "the-porch-house-stow-on-the-wold", "name": "The Porch House", "city": "Stow-on-the-Wold", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 947, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 5, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 947 is the house's own claim, though it has faded from its website: the current site says only 'England's oldest inn' and eleven centuries, while the history page archived in September 2020 gave the tradition that part of the building was a hospice built for Aethelmar, Duke of Cornwall in 947AD, quoting a local history published in 2000. The date rests on that tradition. The radiocarbon test usually cited in support cannot be traced: the buildings archaeologist James Wright asked the county archaeologist, who has no record of any samples being taken from the building, and no report has been published. Guinness World Records no longer maintains an oldest-pub category. English Heritage dates the standing building to the 15th century, and no record of an inn here (the Eagle and Child) appears before the 18th century.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/porch-house-stow-on-the-wold-162432 | https://www.gloucestershirepubs.co.uk/pubs/royalist-hotel-porch-house-stow-on-the-wold/ | https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/2025/01/02/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-29-porch-house/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20200910175538/https://www.porch-house.co.uk/history/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/672048", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-porch-house-stow-on-the-wold/" }, { "slug": "the-bush-inn-morwenstow", "name": "The Bush Inn", "city": "Morwenstow", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 950, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in the National Heritage List for England; the nearest listed building at Crosstown is Sunshine Alley, a probably-18th-century cottage (NHLE 1141815)", "top100_rank": 6, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub cites hospitality from around 950 AD and a 13th-century building, and offers no documentation for either. Two searches on 12 September 2026 turned up nothing to support them and two blanks worth recording. Historic England's list holds 23 entries in Morwenstow parish - the church, six chest tombs, the vicarage, Tonacombe Manor, Hawker's hut, the ship's figurehead by the lych gate - and not the inn; the only listed house at Crosstown is Sunshine Alley next door, which the list calls a house, probably C18. And Sabine Baring-Gould's life of Robert Stephen Hawker, the vicar who made this parish famous, names no inn in it at all. Neither is a disproof, but both are places the claim would show if it had a record behind it. Treat both dates as tradition.", "sources": "https://www.thebushinnmorwenstow.com/ | https://harbourholidays.co.uk/oldest-pubs-cornwall/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/bush-inn-morwenstow-138970 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1711879 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1141815&resourceID=5 | https://archive.org/details/vicarofmorwen00bari", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bush-inn-morwenstow/" }, { "slug": "the-bingley-arms-bardsey", "name": "The Bingley Arms", "city": "Bardsey", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 953, "earliest_documented": 1738, "gap_years": 785, "building_year": 1738, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 7, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England's listing and its 2022 'oldest pub' blog find a mid-18th-century building with a 1738 datestone and no evidence for a 10th- or 11th-century inn; no pubs appear in Domesday. The 953 date is unsourced tradition. 1738 is a building date, not a documented licence.", "sources": "https://www.bingleyarms.com/index | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/bingley-arms-bardsey-177414 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1313185 | https://heritagecalling.com/2022/12/22/what-is-the-oldest-pub-or-inn-in-england/ | https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/2023/07/02/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-23-the-bingley-arms/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bingley_Arms | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/323492 | https://www.blunham.com/big/eng/YKS/WRY/Bardsey/Bardsey22Dry.html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bingley-arms-bardsey/" }, { "slug": "the-old-inn-st-breward", "name": "The Old Inn", "city": "St Breward", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1000, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 8, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 11th-century date, tied to monks building the nearby church, comes from the pub and from tourism lists; no documentary or architectural dating was found. The pub's own about page is more careful than the lists that repeat it: it says the middle bar and kitchens were built in the 11th century as lodging for the monks, that the house is believed to have begun trading as a public house in the 15th century, and that written records start in 1806 with the landlord John Jory. It was offered for sale in 2024 but CAMRA lists it as open.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-inn-st-breward-139197 | https://harbourholidays.co.uk/oldest-pubs-cornwall/ | https://theoldinnandrestaurant.co.uk/about-us | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/745623", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-inn-st-breward/" }, { "slug": "the-royal-oak-winchester", "name": "The Royal Oak", "city": "Winchester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1002, "earliest_documented": 1430, "gap_years": 428, "building_year": 1450, "building_year_source": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1322135)", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1322135)", "top100_rank": 9, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The link with Queen Emma's residence in 1002 is legend. Local historians cite records of an unnamed taverner here between about 1390 and 1430 and a 1637 schedule naming a tapster with a brewhouse, which gives it one of the better documented medieval tavern histories in Hampshire.", "sources": "https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/hampshire/royal-oak-winchester | https://www.petersfieldpost.co.uk/news/nostalgia-two-ancient-inns-vie-for-the-title-of-oldest-pub-in-county-307771 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1322135 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol5/pp36-44 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/12371", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-royal-oak-winchester/" }, { "slug": "the-church-house-inn-rattery", "name": "The Church House Inn", "city": "Rattery", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1028, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England list entry 1308433, listed 9 February 1961)", "top100_rank": 10, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1028 date, tied to monks or masons building the parish church, is tradition and is not repeated on the pub's own website. The standing building is described by CAMRA as a listed 16th-century church house.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/church-house-inn-rattery-148696 | https://thechurchhouseinn.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1429137 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/results_single.aspx?uid=1308433&resourceID=5", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-church-house-inn-rattery/" }, { "slug": "klosterschenke-weltenburg-kelheim-weltenburg", "name": "Klosterschenke Weltenburg", "city": "Kelheim-Weltenburg", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1050, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Baudenkmal D-2-73-137-177 (Bavarian monument list, Weltenburg Abbey)", "top100_rank": 11, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The abbey advertises brewing since 1050, a date repeated by Wikipedia but resting on monastic tradition rather than a published charter; the date refers to the brewery, not to the present tavern. When the courtyard Klosterschenke first served the public is not documented in the sources checked.", "sources": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kloster_Weltenburg | https://www.klosterschenke-weltenburg.de/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Baudenkm%C3%A4ler_in_Kelheim | https://www.geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_273137.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/klosterschenke-weltenburg-kelheim-weltenburg/" }, { "slug": "the-crown-inn-lanlivery", "name": "The Crown Inn", "city": "Lanlivery", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1100, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1144247), designated 28 August 1987", "top100_rank": 12, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 12th-century date is CAMRA's: its Cornwall entry calls the Crown a 12th-century listed pub on the Saints' Way, and the inn's own website gives no date at all. The listing the grade was recorded from has now been read. Historic England designated the Crown on 28 August 1987 and calls it an inn, probably of early 17th-century origin, with alterations and additions of the later 17th and early 18th centuries, a probable early 18th-century cross wing at the upper end, and changes in the 19th and 20th. It describes a three-room through-passage plan with the hall heated by a front lateral stack, a stair tower probably added to the front in the late 17th century, and inside a very wide gable-end fireplace with a stepped granite arch, an unusually deep granite-lined oven and hooks for smoking in the flue. The story of the house lodging the builders of the church is tradition repeated in guides, and no dendrochronology or record confirming medieval inn use has been traced.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/crown-inn-lanlivery-138882 | https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/cornwall/22612692.cornwalls-oldest-pubs-13-historic-inns-need-visit/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1144247 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1486963", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-crown-inn-lanlivery/" }, { "slug": "the-oxenham-arms-south-zeal", "name": "The Oxenham Arms", "city": "South Zeal", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1100, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1305729), first listed 20 February 1952", "top100_rank": 13, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the inn's own: its history page describes Benedictine monks building a nine-room granite and oak monastery around the South Zeal menhir in the 12th century, and the manor being leased and licensed as an inn in 1477, and CAMRA repeats the 1477. The list entry has now been read, and it reaches neither date. Historic England, which listed the house Grade II* on 20 February 1952, calls it an inn, former manor house and home of the Burgoyne family, late 16th to early 17th century, maybe earlier in parts, with modernisations in the 18th, 19th and 20th: a courtyard-plan house of large coursed granite ashlar blocks under slate that was once thatch, with a two-storey gabled porch on a barrel-vaulted ceiling, granite-mullioned windows under hoodmoulds, a wide Tudor-arched carriageway whose labels carry the initials B and W, several 16th- and 17th-century doorframes, and a side-pegged jointed cruck truss over the kitchen wing. It also describes what the inn is best known for: an enormous upright slab of granite built into the inner wall of the rear parlour, which the surveyor reads as very probably a prehistoric standing stone that the house was built around. Nothing in the entry approaches the 12th century, and nothing in it reaches 1477 either. So the grade falls from B, which means fabric of the claimed age is documented, to C, and the 1477 is no longer recorded here as the earliest documented drinking on the site: it is a year the inn prints about a house the register dates a century later, and no licence, court roll or deed behind it has been read.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/oxenham-arms-south-zeal-188406 | https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/devon/22576178.11-historical-pubs-devon-visit/ | https://www.theoxenhamarms.com/history | https://web.archive.org/web/20240214035741/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1305729 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1420731", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-oxenham-arms-south-zeal/" }, { "slug": "the-skirrid-inn-llanvihangel-crucorney", "name": "The Skirrid Inn", "city": "Llanvihangel Crucorney", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1110, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 1918)", "top100_rank": 14, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw's listing calls it a fine C17 purpose-built inn and says it is not medieval despite its claims. The Glamorgan-Gwent Historic Environment Record, now kept by the Heneb HER Charitable Trust, says the same from its own survey work: record 01623g describes a mid-to-late 17th-century building that appears to have been purpose-built as an inn, with 17th-century roof timbers, ground-floor ceilings, oak stair and door frame, and an exterior whose 17th-century appearance is largely the result of a 19th-century rebuilding that replaced every window in 17th-century style. It states plainly that the building is popularly supposed to be of medieval origin and that there is no evidence for anything earlier than the 17th century, and it cites Peter Smith's Houses of the Welsh Countryside, which classes the house as a stone building of regional type A with a lateral chimney and inside cross-passage, and the trust's own survey of Monmouthshire historic settlements of 1996-97. The Royal Commission's National Monuments Record of Wales carries the house as NPRN 20846, a public house of the post-medieval period. A medieval predecessor on a pilgrim route is speculation, and courthouse hangings are undocumented.", "sources": "https://www.skirridinn.com/ | https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300001918 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skirrid_Inn | https://www.visitmonmouthshire.com/accommodation/skirrid-mountain-inn-p1501331 | https://www.inkl.com/news/one-of-wales-oldest-pubs-has-reopened-after-four-years-and-it-s-now-a-wedding-venue | https://archwilio.org.uk/arch/query/page.php?watprn=GGAT01623g&dbname=ggat&tbname=core | https://coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/20846 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1570972", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-skirrid-inn-llanvihangel-crucorney/" }, { "slug": "zum-roten-baren-freiburg-im-breisgau", "name": "Zum Roten Bären", "city": "Freiburg im Breisgau", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1120, "earliest_documented": 1387, "gap_years": 267, "building_year": 1120, "building_year_source": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_roten_B%C3%A4ren", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Under monument protection with the rest of the Oberlinden group (Denkmalschutz)", "top100_rank": 15, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A hotel and restaurant whose bar serves an espresso, an aperitif or a glass of wine without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The Bären calls itself the oldest inn in Germany and dates itself to 1120, the year the dukes of Zähringen founded Freiburg. What 1120 dates is the ground rather than the trade. German Wikipedia and the city's own tourist service both say the foundations, and the three-storey cellar with its arcades and pillars, belong to the manor house of the Zähringer court that stood here before the city did; the cellar can be seen through a glass panel in the entrance floor, and a column in it is said to have been cut in 1263. The drinking house is documented later, and well. Johann Bienger is named in a land record of the Adelhausen convent in 1311, and his grandson Hanmann in a court document of 13 March 1387 as \"Würt ze dem roten Bern\" — the landlord at the Red Bear — which is the earliest record traced that names the house and its trade in the same breath. The Bienger family held it until about 1406, and the house counts more than fifty landlords since. Two encyclopedias disagree about the rebuilding: the English one has the present baroque house finished in 1718 for the landlord Andreas Pflug after French soldiers damaged the older one, the German one has the Romanesque and Gothic arcaded house pulled down after the French razed Freiburg's fortifications in 1744. Either way what stands above ground is eighteenth-century, and the grade rests on the cellar rather than the front. Whether the public can be served a drink here without ordering a meal is answered by the house itself, which describes a bar under the old vaulting to lean against for an espresso, an aperitif or a glass of wine, and a room where a spontaneous drink at that bar is the first of the three things it offers. Its published hours run from midday to eleven at night, with the kitchen open for four of those hours. Two other German houses claim the same title: the Herberge zum Löwen at Seelbach and Zum Riesen at Miltenberg, which has a page here and claims 1158.", "sources": "https://www.roter-baeren.de/historie/ | https://www.roter-baeren.de/restaurant/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_roten_B%C3%A4ren | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_Roten_B%C3%A4ren | https://visit.freiburg.de/en/zum-roten-baeren | https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1548463 | https://www.badische-zeitung.de/freiburg/roter-baeren-holzsaeule-von-1263-wird-saniert--54929850.html | https://d-nb.info/993716539", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/zum-roten-baren-freiburg-im-breisgau/" }, { "slug": "the-olde-bell-hurley", "name": "The Olde Bell", "city": "Hurley", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1135, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": 16, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the hotel's own: its history page says the Olde Bell first opened in 1135 as a guest house for visitors to the Benedictine priory, and it kept an 890th birthday in 2025. The foundation date is a long-standing tradition, not a documented licence. The surviving timber-framed building is Grade II* listed, but the earliest record of it trading as an inn has not been identified.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Olde_Bell,_Hurley | https://www.windsor.gov.uk/accommodation/the-olde-bell-p39913 | https://www.theoldebell.co.uk/about-us/history/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol3/pp152-160 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol2/pp73-77 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/734485 | https://www.theoldebell.co.uk/christmas/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-olde-bell-hurley/" }, { "slug": "the-old-house-1147-llangynwyd", "name": "The Old House 1147", "city": "Llangynwyd", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1147, "earliest_documented": 1800, "gap_years": 653, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw)", "top100_rank": 17, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw's listing describes a later-17th-century thatched house extended in the 18th and 19th centuries, with no medieval fabric noted. The Glamorgan-Gwent Historic Environment Record, now Heneb, agrees from its own file: record 02034m gives a 17th-century core with 18th- and 19th-century additions and a modern extension, two storeys under a thatched roof. The Royal Commission's National Monuments Record carries it as NPRN 19503, a public house of the post-medieval period. The house does have a documented past as a drinking house, and it is Georgian rather than Norman: Cadrawd's history of the parish, printed in 1887, has the Independents of Llangynwyd worshipping in the long room of the Old House Tavern for years before they built Bethesda about 1800, has them return to the same long room when the Maesteg works brought newcomers, and tells a courtship story against a landlord who cut cordwood for a living. That is the earliest record of drinking here that we have traced. The same parish history, which names the Old House four times, gives no date of 1147 and nothing medieval for the building. The inn closed in 2015 and reopened around 2019 after restoration.", "sources": "https://www.theoldhouse1147.co.uk/ | https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300011352-the-old-house-inn-ph-llangynwyd-middle | https://www.inkl.com/news/one-of-wales-oldest-pubs-has-reopened-after-four-years-and-it-s-now-a-wedding-venue | https://www.visitwales.com/things-do/food-and-drink/places-eat-and-drink/welsh-inns-pint-past | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/127872 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1130612 | https://archwilio.org.uk/arch/query/page.php?watprn=GGAT02034m&dbname=ggat&tbname=core | https://coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/19503 | https://archive.org/details/historyllangynw00evangoog", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-house-1147-llangynwyd/" }, { "slug": "the-red-lion-chalton", "name": "The Red Lion", "city": "Chalton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1147, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1178528), first listed 16 March 1954", "top100_rank": 18, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Tradition holds the house was built about 1147 for the builders of St Michael's church and became an inn between the 14th and 16th centuries. Two published readings now stand against that year. The Victoria County History of Hampshire (volume 3, 1908) calls parts of the house at least 500 years old — about 1400, counted from when it was written — and dates the church's oldest fabric, the chancel, to the middle of the 13th century, a hundred years after the house is said to have been built for it. Historic England's listing, read on 17 September 2026, is firmer still: it lists the Red Lion Grade II, first listed on 16 March 1954, and calls it a public house, a late 16th-century Wealden house with small 18th-century extensions at each end and 20th-century restoration, with the frame exposed, the upper floor jettied at each side, curved braces under the intervening eaves plate, painted brick infill, some flintwork at the rear and a hipped thatched roof. No documentary licence date has been published and nothing traced records drinking at Chalton in any year, so 1147 stands as tradition and the grade is C.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/red-lion-chalton-190128 | https://www.petersfieldpost.co.uk/news/nostalgia-two-ancient-inns-vie-for-the-title-of-oldest-pub-in-county-307771 | https://www.redlionchalton.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1697998 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp102-110 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1178528", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-red-lion-chalton/" }, { "slug": "red-lion-southampton", "name": "Red Lion", "city": "Southampton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1148, "earliest_documented": 1552, "gap_years": 404, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1092055)", "top100_rank": 19, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1148 that local accounts attach to the Red Lion belongs to the cellars, not to any record of drinking here. Historic England lists the building Grade II* as a well-preserved late C15 or early C16 hall house, with a medieval vault below probably left from an earlier house, and the frontage is 1920s. Southampton's local histories give the first licence as 1552. The upper room is shown as the court of the 1415 Southampton Plot. The standing hall is later than the trial and no record we found places the hearing here, though a medieval vault survives from an earlier building on the site.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1092055 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lion_Inn,_Southampton | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/red-lion-southampton-188766 | https://sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:red-lion-public-house | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp490-524 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/220383", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/red-lion-southampton/" }, { "slug": "the-pied-bull-chester", "name": "The Pied Bull", "city": "Chester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1155, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1376356), first listed 28 July 1955 and amended 6 August 1998", "top100_rank": 20, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says it dates to 1155, is reputedly Chester's oldest licensed house and has a staircase of 1535. Historic England's entry for 57 Northgate Street, read on 17 September 2026, calls the house an inn, probably on the site of two medieval tenements, and dates the fabric to the 17th century, partly refronted later that century and extended to the rear in the 19th. The oldest thing it names is oak framing on the division between the two former tenements, which it puts at perhaps the 16th century, and it describes the open-well stair as 17th-century oak rather than 1535. It ends with George Borrow, who drank here and wrote about the ale in Wild Wales. So the register supports a 17th-century inn on a medieval plot and nothing within five hundred years of 1155, which stays tradition.", "sources": "https://www.piedbull.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/pied-bull-chester-137130 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1376356 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/315053", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-pied-bull-chester/" }, { "slug": "the-mermaid-inn-rye", "name": "The Mermaid Inn", "city": "Rye", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1156, "earliest_documented": 1670, "gap_years": 514, "building_year": 1420, "building_year_source": "Pevsner", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": 21, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1156 date refers to the cellars, which Pevsner and English Heritage place in the 13th century. The timber-framed inn was rebuilt around 1420, and the house traded without a full licence for long periods and reopened with a bar in 1955. William Holloway's history of Rye, printed in 1847 from the town's records, carries it back further than this page could before. He prints the schedule of the king's bailiff's rents of assize at Rye, dated 1670, which charges 5s. a year - the heaviest rent in Middle Street ward - on the tenements, stable, close and garden of the heirs of William Gostrey, called the Mermaide, late of Thomas Higgins, jurat, some time of William Didsbury, jurat, and before Pedell's, abutting to the King's street, called the Middle street. Holloway identifies that property as the Mermaid Inn, and describing the town about 1700 he calls Mermaid Street the principal street and the Mermaid Inn there the first of its kind. Earlier still, Thomas Peacock's will of 1638 settled on his free school an annuity of £4 out of a messuage in Middle Street called the Mermaid. The word inn is Holloway's reading rather than the schedule's; 1670 is the date of the document he prints, and nothing naming this house earlier than Peacock's will of 1638 has been traced here.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/mermaid-inn-rye-182763 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mermaid_Inn,_Rye | https://www.mermaidinn.com/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/781272 | https://archive.org/details/historyantiquiti00holliala", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-mermaid-inn-rye/" }, { "slug": "gasthaus-zum-riesen-miltenberg", "name": "Gasthaus Zum Riesen", "city": "Miltenberg", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1158, "earliest_documented": 1411, "gap_years": 253, "building_year": 1590, "building_year_source": "Inscribed 1590 on the gable oriel and tree-ring dated, per the Bavarian monument list", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Baudenkmal D-6-76-139-86 in the Bavarian monument list, as the hotel and inn Zum Riesen, a former princes' hostelry, with its adjoining ranges in Riesengasse", "top100_rank": 22, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house calls itself Germany's oldest inn and dates itself to 1158, the year it says Emperor Barbarossa lodged here. Its own history page traces that to an 1865 pamphlet by Dr Ph. Madler, which reported the Hof zum Riesen known from documents by the mid-twelfth century, and adds that the records Madler worked from no longer survive — nor do those behind the royal visits of 1314 and 1368. What survives is the Miltenberg court book of 1411, naming Conrad Trestram as the Riesen-Wirt. The town itself is first documented in 1226. The Bavarian heritage register dendro-dates the standing frame to 1590 and an adjoining range to 1481/82, so no fabric approaches 1158. The princes'-hostelry title is itself old: the council voted Jost Virnhaber a hundred oak trunks in 1589 because the house was a Fürstenherberge.", "sources": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_Riesen_(Miltenberg) | https://www.riesen-miltenberg.de/ | https://riesen-miltenberg.de/geschichtedesriesen/ | https://www.geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_676139.pdf | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltenberg | https://opac.k10plus.de/DB=2.1/PPNSET?PPN=38735266X | https://pages.destination.one/de/miltenberg/streaming/detail/Gastro/g_100013987/gasthaus-zum-riesen", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/gasthaus-zum-riesen-miltenberg/" }, { "slug": "lord-crewe-arms-blanchland", "name": "Lord Crewe Arms", "city": "Blanchland", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1165, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II*, National Heritage List for England 1154141; No. 17 and the building west of it, now a wing of the inn, are listed separately as 1045387", "top100_rank": 23, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn occupies former buildings of the Premonstratensian abbey at Blanchland, founded in 1165, so the fabric is genuinely medieval and the claim is the abbey's foundation rather than a record of drink. Historic England's list entry, read on 17 September 2026 through an archived copy of entry 1154141, is more precise than anything the page carried before: the range is the abbey's west cloister, probably the abbot's lodge, guest house and kitchen, it is 13th and 15th century, and it was remodelled in the middle of the 18th century, when the Gothick west front and the panelled hall were made. The entry describes the range as a hotel and records the Forster family living here after the Dissolution, with Thomas Forster hiding in the priest's hole after the rising of 1715 before escaping to France. CAMRA's branch entry says the house has been the village pub and hotel since the 18th century. So the fabric a reader stands in is thirteenth-century and eighteenth-century, the drinking use is Georgian, and the 1165 belongs to the abbey.", "sources": "https://www.lordcrewearmsblanchland.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/lord-crewe-arms-blanchland-193733 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1154141 | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/ZOdPfBS3aqqDYPUQ/arcgis/rest/services/National_Heritage_List_for_England_NHLE_v02_VIEW/FeatureServer/0/query?where=ListEntry%3D1154141&outFields=ListEntry%2CName%2CGrade&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/510203", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/lord-crewe-arms-blanchland/" }, { "slug": "the-lamb-inn-eastbourne", "name": "The Lamb Inn", "city": "Eastbourne", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1180, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 24, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Popular histories date it to 1180 and cite a crypt-like cellar and secret passage linked to the neighbouring Norman church; the pub itself more cautiously calls the building 14th century. No documentary licence date has been confirmed.", "sources": "https://www.historic-uk.com/Blog/Twelve-Oldest-Inns-In-England/ | https://www.thelambeastbourne.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/lamb-inn-eastbourne-182617 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1951340 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/results_single.aspx?uid=1043679&resourceID=5", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-lamb-inn-eastbourne/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-trip-to-jerusalem-nottingham", "name": "Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem", "city": "Nottingham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1189, "earliest_documented": 1751, "gap_years": 562, "building_year": 1650, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1271192)", "top100_rank": 25, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1189 is the pub's own, in black letters on the building and in print: the Greene King page for the house says its doors first opened in 1189, making it England's oldest surviving inn. No document supports it. Historic England notes the first reference to a pub here (as The Pilgrim) in 1751 and the Trip name by 1799; the standing building is mid-17th century, though the sandstone caves behind it are older. Historic England also traces the 'oldest pub in England' line to about 1910, when a landlord put up new signage.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Trip_to_Jerusalem | https://heritagecalling.com/2022/12/22/what-is-the-oldest-pub-or-inn-in-england/ | https://pubgallery.co.uk/2022/03/03/britains-ancient-pubs-or-are-they/ | https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/nottinghamshire/ye-olde-trip-to-jerusalem | https://archive.org/details/datebookremarka00suttgoog | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/217277", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-trip-to-jerusalem-nottingham/" }, { "slug": "the-coopers-arms-rochester", "name": "The Coopers Arms", "city": "Rochester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1189, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1145838)", "top100_rank": 26, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Coopers Arms tells its own story carefully: built in the reign of Richard I, left derelict after the dissolution of the monasteries, and opened as an inn in 1543. Historic England is less generous, listing a timber-framed house of C17 or earlier with later alterations, and no 12th-century fabric is described. Nothing was found to document either 1189 or 1543. The pub stands beside the cathedral precinct, and the tradition that monks built and used it is what gives the 12th-century date its long life.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1145838 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/coopers-arms-rochester-167803 | https://www.thecoopersarms.co.uk/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol4/pp153-182 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/609866", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-coopers-arms-rochester/" }, { "slug": "the-brazen-head-dublin", "name": "The Brazen Head", "city": "Dublin", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1198, "earliest_documented": 1613, "gap_years": 415, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "National Inventory of Architectural Heritage reg. 50080525", "top100_rank": 27, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "No record supports 1198. A property called the Brazen Head is documented in 1613 (Richard Fagan), an ale licence in 1661 and use as an inn by 1668; the present building was completed around 1754. The 1668 has a second reading behind it now: John Thomas Gilbert, in his History of the City of Dublin, written from the city's own records in the 1850s, says that the Brazen Head was an inn located from the year 1668 in a recess at the rear of the western side of Bridge Street, where it still exists, and that the United Irishmen met in it - Oliver Bond laying his plan for seizing the capital before the society there in February 1797. That is a Dublin historian, a century and a half ago, giving the same date for the inn as the registers give, and none for anything earlier. Continuous use on the site since the medieval period is unproven.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brazen_Head | https://brazenhead.com/story/ | https://www.irishhistory.com/places/the-brazen-head-inn-dublin-south-city-co-dublin/ | https://www.visitdublin.com/the-brazen-head | https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50080525/the-brazen-head-19-20-bridge-street-lower-dublin-8-co-dublin | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx | https://archive.org/details/ahistorycitydub02gilbgoog", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-brazen-head-dublin/" }, { "slug": "george-dragon-houghton", "name": "George & Dragon", "city": "Houghton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": 1867, "gap_years": 667, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1234034)", "top100_rank": 28, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA lists the George & Dragon as a 13th-century Sussex pub, and the village tells of Charles II stopping here in 1651 during his flight to Shoreham. Historic England is brief and cautious: a timber-framed building with flint infill, C17 or earlier, buttressed at the front under a hipped tiled roof. No document of drinking here in the 13th century has been traced, and the listing will not commit beyond the 17th, so the early date rests on tradition rather than record. The earliest record of the trade traced here is a trade directory: Kelly's Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex for 1867 gives Houghton nine commercial entries - three grocers, two farmers, a blacksmith, a shoemaker - and one publican, Robert Cunningham, under the sign of the George. The directory calls the house the George, not the George & Dragon, in a parish of 165 people.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1234034 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/george-dragon-houghton-112658 | https://www.dands.uk/ssx1867/houghton1867/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/148881", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/george-dragon-houghton/" }, { "slug": "llindir-inn-henllan", "name": "Llindir Inn", "city": "Henllan", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 1074), designated 2 February 1981", "top100_rank": 29, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "North Wales Live, Visit Wales and a 2024 holiday-cottage blog repeat a 13th-century date. Cadw's full report for the Llindir, read on 17 September 2026, gives a different reading: a storeyed building of several phases, the earliest probably late 16th-century, traditionally always an inn though perhaps beginning as a farmhouse, with a crow-stepped gable now swallowed by a raised roofline, the stone walling of the right-hand section and the roof and ceiling timbers surviving from that first period, and extensions to the left and rear in the early or second quarter of the 19th century. Cadw designated it on 2 February 1981 for its interest as a thatched inn with sub-medieval origins at the western approach to the village. Sub-medieval is not medieval, and nothing traced records drink sold here in the 13th century, so the claim stays tradition.", "sources": "https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/north-waless-oldest-pubsand-ghosts-14818052 | https://www.visitwales.com/things-do/food-and-drink/places-eat-and-drink/welsh-inns-pint-past | https://www.northwalesholidaycottages.co.uk/other-information/blog/things-to-do/historic-pubs-of-north-wales/ | https://www.llindirinn.com/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/llindir-inn-henllan-136359 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/974414 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1074", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/llindir-inn-henllan/" }, { "slug": "old-smugglers-inn-ouaisne", "name": "Old Smugglers Inn", "city": "Ouaisné", "country": "Jersey", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building BR0067 (Government of Jersey); Jersey Historic Environment Record, primary reference 0100067", "top100_rank": 30, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Visit Jersey and the pub say the house grew from two fishermen's cottages of the 13th century, and CAMRA repeats foundations reputedly of that date. Jersey's own Historic Environment Record, kept by Jersey Heritage, reads the building as Georgian: a good example of an 18th-century rural property, now an inn, of four bays and two storeys with two bays added to the west, granite rubble with dressed quoins and thatch dripstones on its stacks, and standing on the Richmond Map of 1795. The record types it a domestic coastal building and carries it as listed building BR0067. That is five centuries later than the claim, and it makes the house a home before it was an inn. When drink was first sold here is recorded nowhere we have traced.", "sources": "https://www.oldsmugglersinn.com/ | https://www.jersey.com/inspire-me/inspiration/historic-pubs-in-jersey/ | https://channelislands.camra.org.uk/pubguide | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-smugglers-inn-st-brelade-174655 | https://her.jerseyheritage.org/report/502c84f0-116c-0138-914e-740f24312a1c | https://her.jerseyheritage.org/report/507915c0-116c-0138-9150-740f24312a1c", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-smugglers-inn-ouaisne/" }, { "slug": "the-black-bull-inn-boroughbridge", "name": "The Black Bull Inn", "city": "Boroughbridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1315499), designated 19 December 1984", "top100_rank": 31, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 13th century is CAMRA's: its Harrogate and Ripon branch entry calls the Black Bull a 13th-century inn and a Grade II listed building. Regional round-ups (On: Yorkshire 2021, The Yorkshireman October 2025) repeat the same origin and note it is the last of the town's 22 former inns. The pub's own domain no longer resolves to a site. The listing CAMRA points at has now been read: Historic England designated the Black Bull on 19 December 1984 and calls it a public house of probable 17th-century origin, much altered in the 18th century and later, rendered under a swept Welsh slate roof, keeping one stout chamfered ceiling beam and a chamfered fireplace beam inside, and included partly for group value in the square. The register CAMRA cites for the grade therefore dates the house some four hundred years later than the date CAMRA gives it, and the 13th century stands as tradition.", "sources": "https://the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://www.on-magazine.co.uk/yorkshire/stories/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/black-bull-inn-boroughbridge-181415 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1869287 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1315499", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-black-bull-inn-boroughbridge/" }, { "slug": "the-kings-head-galway", "name": "The King's Head", "city": "Galway", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. A search of fifty metres around 15 High Street on 17 September 2026 returned five records — Nos 11 and 12 High Street, a third house lower down the street, 20-22 Middle Street and 26 Shop Street — and nothing for the King's Head", "top100_rank": 32, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub claims a 13th-century building, once a mayor's house, seized by Colonel Peter Stubbers, whom it calls the executioner of Charles I; that identification is unproven. When the house became a pub is undocumented. The claim names a century and no year, so the ranking sorts it from the century's first year. The national inventory has now been searched, and it holds no entry for the house at all: within fifty metres of 15 High Street the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage records five buildings and none of them is the King's Head. That comparison is worth having, because the inventory is not shy of medieval fabric in this street. It dates Nos 11 and 12 High Street to about 1820 on late medieval or early seventeenth-century walls, reading a Font coat of arms above one shopfront and, over a doorway at No. 12, a limestone chimney lintel lettered Ave Maria Gracia and IHS with the date 1615; round the corner at 26 Shop Street it finds a mid-sixteenth-century house behind an 1890s front, identified by a plaque naming Thomas Martin and Evelin Linche and dated 1562. Where medieval stone survives on this street the surveyors say so and quote the date carved on it. Nothing of the kind is recorded for No. 15, so the 800 years rests on the pub's own telling.", "sources": "https://www.thekingshead.ie/ | https://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/oldest-pub-in-every-irish-county/ | https://archive.org/details/historyoftowncou00hard | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-9.05405%2C53.27168%2C-9.05255%2C53.27258&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=REG_NO%2CNUMBER%2CSTREET1%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-kings-head-galway/" }, { "slug": "the-pandora-inn-mylor-bridge", "name": "The Pandora Inn", "city": "Mylor Bridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1141610), first listed 8 November 1979", "top100_rank": 33, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's own page claims the 13th century for parts of the building, and says plainly what stood here then: a small farm on the edge of Restronguet Creek. So the claimed date dates a farm rather than a drinking house, which is why the grade is C. The page gives one real record: by 1488 the Restronguet Estate Accounts put the rent at 8s 4d a year, which it calls one of the earliest written references to the place. That dates the holding, not drink sold on it, so no first record of drinking use is entered. Historic England's listing, read on 17 September 2026, calls the house an inn of about the 17th century, mostly rebuilt in the 19th and greatly extended in the 20th, of painted shale rubble under mostly wheat-reed thatch with scantle slate over the part to the south, originally probably a three-room through-passage plan, with the interior remodelled in the 20th century but keeping old ceiling beams, floorboards and clay tiles in the left-hand room. Nothing in it reaches the 13th century. It was once the Passage House, on the shortest crossing before the Truro turnpike opened in 1828, and was renamed after HMS Pandora, wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791. No source traced dates the change from farm to inn, so none is recorded.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/pandora-inn-restronguet-139146 | https://www.pandorainn.com/ | https://harbourholidays.co.uk/oldest-pubs-cornwall/ | https://www.pandorainn.com/the-pandora/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1141610 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1935491", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-pandora-inn-mylor-bridge/" }, { "slug": "the-ship-inn-porlock", "name": "The Ship Inn", "city": "Porlock", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1296154)", "top100_rank": 34, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Ship advertises itself as a 13th-century coaching inn at the foot of Porlock Hill. Historic England lists it as an inn of C16 to C17 date, probably a three-room and cross-passage house, enlarged by a bay to the left and four bays to the right in the early to mid C19, its thatch half-hipped at one end. The Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record, which keeps the record for this parish, reads it independently and reaches the same century: monument MSO10692, an inn of 16th- or 17th-century origins with a cross passage, altered and enlarged in the early to mid 19th century. Two registers agree with each other and neither reaches the 13th century, and no record of drinking here that early has been traced. The Exmoor record also carries a story of Robert Southey kept in by summer rain, under a year we could not reconcile with the poet's own dates and have not repeated. CAMRA notes the interior for its 16th-century core.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1296154 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/ship-inn-porlock-134162 | https://www.shipinnporlock.co.uk/ | https://www.exmoorher.co.uk/Monument/MSO10692 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1808298", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-ship-inn-porlock/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-swan-thames-ditton", "name": "Ye Olde Swan", "city": "Thames Ditton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1200, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1030113)", "top100_rank": 35, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Swan is advertised as a 13th-century riverside pub, with a story that Henry VIII used the site as a hunting lodge. Historic England describes something quite different: two early C18 houses in colourwashed brick, joined by a C19 link and extended again at the right-hand end to make one public house. Nothing in the listing reaches beyond about 1700, and no medieval record of drinking on the bank here was traced. The riverside setting opposite Hampton Court is real; the 13th century is not established.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1030113 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-swan-thames-ditton-179848 | https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/gallery/see-inside-beautiful-13th-century-33459598 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp462-467 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1778344", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-swan-thames-ditton/" }, { "slug": "the-angel-and-royal-grantham", "name": "The Angel and Royal", "city": "Grantham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1203, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1370, "building_year_source": "https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI30501", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade I listed (Historic England list entry 1062486)", "top100_rank": 36, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A hotel of 29 rooms whose main bar is open to anybody, with two handpumps of Lincolnshire beer.", "evidence_notes": "The hotel's own front page says it has welcomed guests since 1203, and its history page is more careful than the story usually told about it: it says the house stands on ground believed to have belonged to the Knights Templar, and that tradition holds King John and his court lodged here on 23 February 1213. Nothing traced dates a drinking house to 1203. Lincolnshire's historic environment record describes what stood here as a camera of the Knights Templar — an estate house of the order rather than a public inn — possibly passing to the Knights Hospitaller after the Templars were suppressed in 1308. It dates the west wall largely to the fifteenth century and the entrance arch to no earlier than 1370, because the arch carries corbelled heads of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault; Historic England lists the building at grade I. So the standing front is a century and a half younger than the claim, and no document naming the Angel as an inn has been read here. A history of the Great North Road names Richard Leeming as tenant of the Angel Inn and an alderman of Grantham in 1666, and says the inn carried the town's post from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth, but cites no record for either. That is why the grade is C. It is on this site because it is a hotel with a bar the public may use: the Grantham branch of the Campaign for Real Ale lists it with two handpumps in the main hotel bar, usually beer from Brewster's, and updated its entry in March 2026. The cocktail room called the Angel Bar is a separate thing and is booked in hour-long slots. Richard III is said to have signed the Duke of Buckingham's death warrant here in 1483, and the hotel shows a copy of the letter he wrote at Grantham; the letter itself does not name the house.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/angel-royal-grantham-176469 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_and_Royal | https://heritage-explorer.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Monument/MLI30501 | https://www.angelandroyal.co.uk/ | https://greatnorthroad.co.uk/the-angel-inn-grantham | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/237813 | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10093388383 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1062486&resourceID=5", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-angel-and-royal-grantham/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-kings-head-chester", "name": "Ye Olde King's Head", "city": "Chester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1208, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1376307)", "top100_rank": 37, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England is unusually specific: this Grade II* building was put up about 1208 as the town house of Peter the Clerk, who administered Chester Castle, and rebuilt from the old Row level upward in the C15, C16 and early C17 for Randle Holme I, first of four generations of heralds. So the 1208 is real, but it dates a house, not a house of drink. The pub's own history says it became an inn called the King's Head in 1717, and no earlier record of drinking here was traced, which is why this is a C rather than a B.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1376307 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_King%27s_Head_Hotel,_Chester | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-kings-head-chester-137109 | https://www.kingsheadchester.com/post/ye-olde-king-s-head-a-history | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol5/pt2/pp225-239 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/315114", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-kings-head-chester/" }, { "slug": "george-dragon-speldhurst", "name": "George & Dragon", "city": "Speldhurst", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1212, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1241530)", "top100_rank": 38, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub's own site calls it a 13th-century country public house and gives no year; the 1212 comes from CAMRA, whose entry describes a former medieval hall dating back to 1212, and from the Dover Kent Archives. Historic England describes something later and clearer: a late-medieval house, probably late C15, remodelled in the late C16 or early C17, its exposed framing and sandstone footings earning a Grade II* listing. The building began as a hall house, not an inn. No record of drinking here in 1212 was found, and the parts a visitor admires — the beams and the wide hearths — are three centuries younger than the date on the sign.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1241530 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/george-dragon-speldhurst-128349 | http://www.dover-kent.com/2014-project/George-and-Dragon-Speldhurst.html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1827923", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/george-dragon-speldhurst/" }, { "slug": "the-royal-standard-of-england-forty-green", "name": "The Royal Standard of England", "city": "Forty Green", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1213, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 39, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claims of Saxon brewing and a 1213 record as 'Se Scip' are the pub's own, set out on its history page, which also calls the house the oldest free house in England and gives it nearly a thousand years. No primary document has been identified for either. The present building is Tudor brick with a nationally important historic interior; the royal name is attributed to the Restoration era.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/royal-standard-of-england-forty-green-115928 | https://www.historyhit.com/locations/the-royal-standard-of-england/ | https://www.theoldestpub.com/history | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol3/pp155-165 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/355776", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-royal-standard-of-england-forty-green/" }, { "slug": "cafe-den-turk-ghent", "name": "Café Den Turk", "city": "Ghent", "country": "Belgium", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1228, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument (façades and roofs) since 16 September 1966, within the designation of the crossbowmen's guild hall Sint-Jorishof of 13 October 1943; listed as established architectural heritage since 20 June 2023 (inventory object 24549)", "top100_rank": 40, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "No source we can open puts a year on this house. Ghent's own visitor guide calls Den Turk a 15th-century house that claims to be the oldest café in the city, and the Belgian beer press says the same without a date; the café itself posts only on social media. The 1228 and 1340 that circulate are traditional. Local research published in December 2004 concluded the building was occupied by a guild until 1567, so it could have become a tavern at the earliest after that, and possibly only after 1703.", "sources": "https://www.belgiansmaak.com/cafe-den-turk/ | https://visit.gent.be/en/eat-drink/cafe-den-turk | https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/24549 | https://web.archive.org/web/20240917111053/https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/24549", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-den-turk-ghent/" }, { "slug": "the-turks-head-penzance", "name": "The Turks Head", "city": "Penzance", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1233, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 41, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1233 is the pub's own claim. Its website, archived in June 2024, said the house is reputed to date from 1233, when Turks were said to have raided Penzance, and that it was the first inn in England to take the name; the site has since stopped resolving. The hanging sign outside claims only 'the oldest pub in Penzance', with no year. CAMRA calls it a 13th-century pub said to be the oldest in the town. The date and the invasion story are tradition: no documentary or architectural evidence for a medieval inn was found, and the building is said to have been rebuilt after the Spanish burned Penzance in 1595.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/turks-head-penzance-139067 | https://harbourholidays.co.uk/oldest-pubs-cornwall/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20240614154427/https://turksheadpenzance.co.uk/about-us/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1569120 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13894302", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-turks-head-penzance/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-salutation-inn-nottingham", "name": "Ye Olde Salutation Inn", "city": "Nottingham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1240, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1360, "building_year_source": "Dendrochronology", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 42, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1240 is on the building itself: CAMRA's national inventory description records a date of 1240 on the exterior of the jettied St Nicholas Street range, and reads the fabric as a combination of at least three buildings, most likely 16th- and mid-18th-century, heavily restored later. So the date is the house's own assertion rather than anyone's dating of it. Tree-ring work reported on Wikipedia puts the oldest timbers around 1360, and the rock-cut cellars are older still, but claimed 14th- and 15th-century inn references (1336, 1414) could not be verified against primary sources.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Salutation_Inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/salutation-inn-nottingham-162680 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/results_single.aspx?uid=1255137&resourceID=5 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1952588", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-salutation-inn-nottingham/" }, { "slug": "the-bear-inn-oxford", "name": "The Bear Inn", "city": "Oxford", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1242, "earliest_documented": 1774, "gap_years": 532, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 43, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "A 1241 property bequest and the medieval Bear Inn on the High Street (known as Le Tabard by 1432 and the Bear by 1457, closed 1801) underpin the claim, but that was a different building. The present early-17th-century house traded as the Jolly Trooper from 1774 and later took the Bear name.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bear,_Oxford | https://www.bearoxford.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/268342 | https://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/high/tour/south/bear_inn.html | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp3-73", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bear-inn-oxford/" }, { "slug": "adam-and-eve-norwich", "name": "Adam and Eve", "city": "Norwich", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1249, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 44, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the pub's own: its history page says the pub is first recorded in 1249, when it was used by workmen building the cathedral, and that monks of the Great Hospital brewed here. No primary record for that first reference has been published. The standing building is largely 17th century; the lower bar was created from the cellar in 1973.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/adam-eve-norwich-189752 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_Eve,_Norwich | https://www.visitnorwich.co.uk/article/the-oldest-pub-in-norwich/ | https://www.adamandevenorwich.co.uk/history.htm | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol4/pp367-403 | https://www.norwich-heritage.co.uk/pubs/norwich_pubs_today/norwich_pubs_today.shtm | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/5231", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/adam-and-eve-norwich/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-man-scythe-bolton", "name": "Ye Olde Man & Scythe", "city": "Bolton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1251, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 45, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1251 is published by Bolton's local history site, which says the pub dates back to 1251, the year of the charter permitting the market held beside it, and that only the vaulted cellar is that old. Boak & Bailey note an 1892 history of Bolton showing the charter does not name the house. The pub's inn sign carries no date, and the pub has no website of its own beyond a Facebook page. Historic England calls the 1636 rebuild 'reputed'. The link with the Earl of Derby's execution in 1651 is long-standing local history.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Man_%26_Scythe | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1387975 | https://boakandbailey.com/2020/07/oldest-pub-in-england/ | https://www.bolton.org.uk/manscyth.html | https://retiredmartin.com/2025/04/23/ye-olde-man-scythe/ | https://www.manchestersfinest.com/news/haunted-manchester-ye-olde-man-scythe-bolton/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol5/pp243-251 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/861029", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-man-scythe-bolton/" }, { "slug": "taverne-zur-krone-dietikon", "name": "Taverne zur Krone", "city": "Dietikon", "country": "Switzerland", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1259, "earliest_documented": 1259, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1703, "building_year_source": "Cantonal protection order and the city of Dietikon's history of the house, as summarised by German Wikipedia", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Under cantonal protection since 3 November 1982; the order calls the group of tavern buildings exceptionally important", "top100_rank": 46, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant, brasserie and bistro owned by the city; it serves for hours after the kitchen's last orders.", "evidence_notes": "The house and German Wikipedia, which cites the city of Dietikon's 2010 history of the building, both put the first mention of a taverne here in 1259, when it belonged to Wettingen Abbey. A second publisher has now read the charter and describes it differently. Karl Grunder, writing on the Krone in the Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich for 2007, dates it 17 October 1259 and says it is the deed regulating the sale of Dietikon by the Habsburgs to Wettingen — so 1259 is the year the abbey bought the place rather than a year in which it already held it — and that the deed names the taverns of Dietikon and Schlieren beside the mills without describing either of them. What Grunder adds is worth more than the correction: in 1332 the landlord Jakob Bitterkraut and his wife gave up their claims on the Dietikon tavern for twenty pounds of pennies; a tavern charter of 1408, when Konrad Schmid held it, sets out four chambers, two stables and a threshing floor; a landlord named Hurst appears in 1432 and \"Adelheit Stockerin, wirttin zuo Tiettikon\" in 1504. Niclaus Kläui began a new tavern in 1595 and ran out of money, Hans Fischer finished it, and the Fischers held the house until 1646, when the abbey bought the lease back. An inventory of 1799 describes two vaulted cellars, a hall and five chambers on the first floor and rooms on four floors above. A taverne was the grade of licence that allowed food as well as drink, beds for travellers and a painted sign, and this one stood on the road between Zurich and Baden, well used in the days of carters and the mail coach. A bakery was fitted in 1845, the cantonal building directorate placed the group under protection on 3 November 1982, the city of Dietikon bought it on 22 August 2005, and the rooms rebuilt to Tilla Theus's design opened again on 19 April 2010. The charter itself has still not been read here, and nothing traced says whether the house poured without interruption between the bakery and the rebuilding.", "sources": "https://www.kronedietikon.ch/ueber-uns/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krone_Dietikon | https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=mag-001:2007:74::76", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/taverne-zur-krone-dietikon/" }, { "slug": "kytelers-inn-kilkenny", "name": "Kyteler's Inn", "city": "Kilkenny", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1263, "earliest_documented": 1639, "gap_years": 376, "building_year": 1275, "building_year_source": "National Inventory of Architectural Heritage", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Record of Protected Structures (Kilkenny, B189); NIAH reg. 12000116", "top100_rank": 47, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The stone building has genuine medieval fabric (NIAH dates origins to c.1250-1300) and is associated with Dame Alice Kyteler, tried for witchcraft in 1324. That she ran an inn here is tradition, and the contemporary record of her prosecution gives it no help: the narrative edited for the Camden Society in 1843, with extracts from the Irish rolls beside it, shows the family as bankers and moneylenders rather than innkeepers, and treats their house as a private one — it reproaches the chancellor for lodging there when his customary lodging in Kilkenny was elsewhere. Wikipedia records the building as an inn since 1639.", "sources": "https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/12000116/kytelers-inn-saint-kierans-street-gardens-st-johns-par-kilkenny-co-kilkenny | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyteler%27s_Inn | https://www.kytelersinn.com/history-of-the-inn/ | https://www.discoverireland.ie/kilkenny/kytelers-inn | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx | https://archive.org/details/contemporarynarr00kyte", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kytelers-inn-kilkenny/" }, { "slug": "jaskovska-krcma-terlicko", "name": "Jaškovská krčma", "city": "Těrlicko", "country": "Czechia", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1268, "earliest_documented": 1268, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1691, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Entered on the Czech state list of immovable cultural monuments in 1974, register number 2223", "top100_rank": 48, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1268 record is a charter of 12 May 1268 in which Duke Vladislav of Opole renewed the rights of the Benedictines of Orlová, among them a tavern (taberna) at Těrlicko alongside those at Žukov and Ostrava; Czech Wikipedia cites Prasek, Dějiny knížectví Těšínského (1894), p. 40. That is a tavern in a charter, not a house or an owner, at the claimed date. Two caveats stay: the charter names the estate's tavern rather than the standing building, which burned in 1682 and was rebuilt in 1691, and unbroken trading since 1268 is not demonstrated.", "sources": "https://www.patriotmagazin.cz/nesmrtelne-hospody-nejstarsi-hospoda-ceska-jaskovska-krcma-prezila-zbojniky-i-tricetiletou-valku | https://www.kudyznudy.cz/aktivity/jaskovska-krcma-v-terlicku-nejstarsi-krcma-ve-sle | https://www.jaskovskakrcma.cz/ | https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%C5%A1kovsk%C3%A1_kr%C4%8Dma | https://www.hrady.cz/jaskovska-krcma-terlicko | https://www.archives.cz/web/resources/soka_karvina/Jaskovska_krcma.pdf | https://jaskovskakrcma.cz/category/aktuality/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/jaskovska-krcma-terlicko/" }, { "slug": "the-tinners-arms-zennor", "name": "The Tinners Arms", "city": "Zennor", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1271, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1137980)", "top100_rank": 49, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says it was built in 1271 for masons working on St Senara's church, but CAMRA's heritage survey of the Grade II building dates the fabric to the early 18th century. Earlier drinking use on the site is unproven. A second publisher adds a little on each side: John Hobson Matthews, in his history of the parishes of St Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (1892), dates the south side of the nave at Zennor church to the 13th century, which is the century the masons story needs, and indexes the district's inns by name without the Tinners Arms among them.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/139351 | https://tinnersarms.com/ | https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/cornwall/22612692.cornwalls-oldest-pubs-13-historic-inns-need-visit/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/926675 | https://archive.org/details/ahistoryparishe00mattgoog", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-tinners-arms-zennor/" }, { "slug": "piwnica-swidnicka-wroclaw", "name": "Piwnica Świdnicka", "city": "Wrocław", "country": "Poland", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1273, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Part of Old Town Hall, Historic Monument (Pomnik historii)", "top100_rank": 50, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The vaults under the town hall sold strong Świdnica beer in the Middle Ages and the year 1273 is painted over the entrance, but no document for it has been traced. The city of Wrocław's own news service dates the gap this page could previously only call an interruption: trading stopped in 2017 and the cellar reopened on 2 July 2022 after five years shut, with a brewery newly installed in the vaults whose first beer was expected that August. The operator dates the house to the thirteenth century and calls it the oldest representative city inn in the world.", "sources": "https://piwnicaswidnicka.pl/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies | https://www.wroclaw.pl/dla-mieszkanca/piwnica-swidnicka-wroclaw-menu-zdjecia | https://opac.k10plus.de/DB=2.1/PPNSET?PPN=1151702935 | https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piwnica_%C5%9Awidnicka_we_Wroc%C5%82awiu", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/piwnica-swidnicka-wroclaw/" }, { "slug": "eight-bells-chipping-campden", "name": "Eight Bells", "city": "Chipping Campden", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1300, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1171565)", "top100_rank": 51, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Eight Bells is described as 14th century by CAMRA and by the inn, with a story that it housed the masons who built St James's church and stored the bells that gave it its name. Historic England lists a C17 Cotswold ashlar building with mullioned and bay windows, a stone slate roof and an inglenook by the stone bay. That is three hundred years short of the claim, and no record of drinking here in the 1300s has been traced. The county record adds nothing either way: the Gloucestershire Historic Environment Record holds no entry for the inn at all, and the records it does keep in this part of Church Street are a watching brief at Mill Cottage in 2002, which found two post-medieval pits, and the town itself, whose weekly market was granted to the inhabitants of Campden by 1247 and held in the High Street. The passage through to the courtyard and the great hearth are genuine enough.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1171565 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/eight-bells-chipping-campden-162387 | https://eightbellsinn.co.uk/ | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=20910&resourceID=108 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/75449", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/eight-bells-chipping-campden/" }, { "slug": "the-george-cranbrook", "name": "The George", "city": "Cranbrook", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1300, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 52, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The operator dates the inn to around 1300, and local tradition says Edward I visited in 1299 and Elizabeth I in 1573; these visits are not tied to documented use of this building as an inn, which also housed the town's magistrates' court until 1859.", "sources": "https://www.thegeorgehotelkent.co.uk/ | https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/which-pub-is-the-oldest-in-kent-256179/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/26305 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol7/pp90-113", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-george-cranbrook/" }, { "slug": "the-george-inn-lacock", "name": "The George Inn", "city": "Lacock", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1300, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1022198)", "top100_rank": 53, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The George presents itself as a 14th-century pub, and CAMRA repeats the date. Historic England lists it as an inn of C16 or earlier date, timber-framed and rubble-stone with a cross wing to the street and an early C19 ashlar range alongside. The county record does not agree with the national one. The Wiltshire and Swindon Historic Environment Record carries the house as monument MWI34179, The George Inn, Lacock, typed as an inn and a timber-framed building, and assigns it to the medieval period; it records a coach house to the rear as MWI72598, and refers anyone wanting detail to the listed building description and to the Wiltshire Buildings Record, which we have not read. The HER's period is a classification and not a dated survey - medieval runs from the Conquest to the 1540s, so it does not reach 1300 by itself - but it does mean one register reads this fabric as earlier than the other, and the reader should know that before deciding what to make of the 14th century. The National Trust, which owns Lacock village and the freehold, and Wadworth, which runs the bar, both trade on the older figure. No record of drinking here before the 16th century has been traced.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1022198 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/george-inn-lacock-126822 | https://www.georgeinnlacock.co.uk/ | https://maps2.bristol.gov.uk/server2/rest/services/ext/wilts_her_2022/MapServer/4/query?where=MONUMENT_UID%3D%27MWI34179%27&outFields=*&f=json&returnGeometry=false | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/260617", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-george-inn-lacock/" }, { "slug": "the-old-inn-widecombe-in-the-moor", "name": "The Old Inn", "city": "Widecombe-in-the-Moor", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1300, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1242574)", "top100_rank": 54, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA reports thick stone walls and oak beams over 600 years old in the central section. Historic England, which listed the house Grade II on 23 August 1955, reads it differently and two centuries later: a granite rubble public house of the 16th or 17th century, U-shaped in plan, with wings added at the front in the 18th or 19th century, its older features a stone-flagged floor, chamfered beams and two large granite fireplaces. Nothing in the list entry reaches the 14th century, the link to masons building St Pancras church is tradition, and no early licensing record was found, so the claim is graded as tradition rather than as a building of the claimed age.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-inn-widecombe-in-the-moor-148784 | https://www.oldinnwidecombe.co.uk/ | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1242574&resourceID=5 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1768615", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-inn-widecombe-in-the-moor/" }, { "slug": "the-white-hart-witley", "name": "The White Hart", "city": "Witley", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1300, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1096902)", "top100_rank": 55, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA describes the White Hart as a 14th-century timber-framed pub, and the village adds that George Eliot lodged nearby and that Edward VI is supposed to have visited. Historic England lists a C15 hall house with C17 alterations, tile-hung above whitewashed brick under a steeply pitched hipped roof, extended in the early C20. The frame is medieval, then, but a century later than the claim, and no record of drinking here in the 1300s was found, which keeps this at C rather than B.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096902 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/white-hart-witley-151417 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp61-69 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/165341", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-white-hart-witley/" }, { "slug": "the-old-bridge-inn-ripponden", "name": "The Old Bridge Inn", "city": "Ripponden", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1307, "earliest_documented": 1754, "gap_years": 447, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 56, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub cites a 1307 record of the site's yeoman-clothier owners. Historic England lists the first recorded landlord as John Hurstwood in 1754, with a 16th-century cruck truss and 17th-century panelling inside, so the fabric is old but pub use is only documented from the 18th century. A commercial directory confirms it independently: Edward Baines's directory of the county of York (1822) lists John Schofield as victualler at the Old Bridge, one of four licensed houses named in the village that year, which is the house trading under its present name and nothing earlier.", "sources": "https://theoldbridgeinn.co.uk/about/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-bridge-inn-ripponden-177730 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1232389 | https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/history/family-charge-one-yorkshires-pubs-21931600 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1548050 | https://archive.org/details/historydirector00baingoog", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-bridge-inn-ripponden/" }, { "slug": "green-dragon-wymondham", "name": "Green Dragon", "city": "Wymondham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1310, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1196692)", "top100_rank": 57, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Green Dragon puts 1310 on its sign and its website. Historic England lists the building Grade II* as substantially mid-C15 and, from the arcade of pointed arches in the front wall, thinks it began as a shop. Norfolk pub historians note that 1317 is the earliest date anyone gives, that others read the fabric as late C14 or mid C15, and that its use as a pub is traceable from the 16th century. The house survived the fire that took some three hundred Wymondham buildings in 1615.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1196692 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/green-dragon-wymondham-189075 | https://greendragonwymondham.com/ | https://www.norfolkpubs.co.uk/wymondham/wymgrd.htm | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol2/pp498-534 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1872175", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/green-dragon-wymondham/" }, { "slug": "the-new-inn-pembridge", "name": "The New Inn", "city": "Pembridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1311, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1166993)", "top100_rank": 58, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Pembridge's own historians trace the New Inn to 1311, when it is said to have begun as a farmhouse, and tell of the treaty of 1461 that put Edward IV on the throne being ratified inside after the battle of Mortimer's Cross. Historic England describes a C17 timber-framed house, later a public house, with an H-plan front to the market square, and CAMRA calls it a fine 17th-century half-timbered building. So the record and the claim are three centuries apart. CAMRA rates the interior of very special national interest for its long settle, inglenook and pair of wall-mounted handpumps.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1166993 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/new-inn-pembridge-182140 | https://www.portraitofpembridge.co.uk/history/xyniaheimtohdnkz413ykbhustkwqv-w4953 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/489548", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-new-inn-pembridge/" }, { "slug": "the-sloop-inn-st-ives", "name": "The Sloop Inn", "city": "St Ives", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1312, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1327836), first listed 4 June 1952", "top100_rank": 59, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "'Reputedly from 1312' is repeated by CAMRA and the inn itself, and the building is a 17th- and 18th-century house. Historic England's listing, read on 17 September 2026, says so in as many words: the Sloop is listed Grade II, first listed on 4 June 1952, and described as C17-18, low and L-shaped, of colourwashed granite rubble with a tarred plinth, two storeys, slate-hung above the ground floor on the sides of the projecting right-hand wing, under a half-hipped slate roof, and grouped with Slipway Cottage and Sloop Cottage behind. John Hobson Matthews, writing the history of the parish in 1892 from the borough's own records, calls the Sloop an old inn on the Wharf and says it was anciently the home of the Williams family, without putting a date to either — while dating neighbouring houses in the same chapter from their inscriptions. No medieval record of drinking here has been traced.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/sloop-inn-st-ives-139228 | https://www.sloop-inn.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/530398 | https://archive.org/details/ahistoryparishe00mattgoog | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1327836", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-sloop-inn-st-ives/" }, { "slug": "scotch-piper-inn-lydiate", "name": "Scotch Piper Inn", "city": "Lydiate", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1320, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": 60, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England says 'said to date from 1320, probably 16th century'. CAMRA cites dendrochronology suggesting mid-16th-century timbers. The thatched cruck house is genuinely early, but no medieval licence or alehouse record has been found; the name change to Scotch Piper is traditionally dated 1745.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/scotch-piper-liverpool-165785 | https://www.scotchpiper.com/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1343315 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_Piper_Inn | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/569530 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol3/pp200-208", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/scotch-piper-inn-lydiate/" }, { "slug": "the-cott-inn-dartington", "name": "The Cott Inn", "city": "Dartington", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1320, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1291403)", "top100_rank": 61, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The thatched house is long, low and genuinely old, and the 1320 with the story of Johannes Cott is the inn's own, repeated by CAMRA. Historic England, which listed it Grade II on 11 November 1952, dates it early in the 17th century or of earlier origins, remodelled later that century and extended at both ends in the 18th: a three-room-and-through-passage house with gable-end stacks, a plank-and-muntin screen surviving in part, and a bar put into the central room in the 20th century. The entry considers whether that room was made from an open hall and says there is no evidence for one. So the fabric on the record is Stuart rather than medieval, no contemporary record of a hostelry here was found, and the 14th-century claim stands as tradition.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/cott-inn-dartington-148675 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cott_Inn | https://www.cottinn.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1429034 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1291403&resourceID=5", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-cott-inn-dartington/" }, { "slug": "the-haunch-of-venison-salisbury", "name": "The Haunch of Venison", "city": "Salisbury", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1320, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1273531)", "top100_rank": 62, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1320 is the pub's own: its history page says the first record is circa 1320, when the building housed craftsmen working on the cathedral spire, and the home page claims nearly 700 years and probably the oldest hostelry in Salisbury. Historic England reads the building differently: largely mid-C15, and originally the church house for St Thomas's, its Grade II* listing valuing the clear evidence of a change from church house to public house. So the fabric is a century later than the claim and the drinking came later again. What is not in doubt is the interior — pewter bar, panelling and the small upstairs room known as the House of Lords, with its mummified hand.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1273531 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/haunch-of-venison-salisbury-191946 | https://www.visitsalisbury.uk/places/haunch-of-venison | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/261008 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09555671", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-haunch-of-venison-salisbury/" }, { "slug": "the-bell-inn-aldworth", "name": "The Bell Inn", "city": "Aldworth", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1340, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 63, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1340 date is not documented; Historic England dates the timber-framed former hall house to the 15th century or possibly earlier. The same family has run it since the 18th century.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Inn,_Aldworth | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/bell-inn-aldworth-119005 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/202851", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bell-inn-aldworth/" }, { "slug": "the-tower-inn-slapton", "name": "The Tower Inn", "city": "Slapton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1347, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in the National Heritage List for England. A search of Slapton village on 17 September 2026 returned twenty-seven entries, among them the Grade I tower of the collegiate chantry of St Mary that the inn is named after (list entry 1317950) and the Chantry with its coach house and stables, and nothing for the inn", "top100_rank": 64, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says it began in 1347 as cottages for workmen building the adjacent chantry college tower. Historic England dates that tower to about 1372 or 1373 and records Sir Guy de Brian, Edward III's standard-bearer at Crecy and lord of the manor, founding the collegiate chantry in 1373 with six priests, a rector, five fellows and four clerks; the tower is listed Grade I and is all that stands of the chantry church. So the building work the inn attaches itself to began a quarter of a century after the year it gives. The inn itself is not on the National Heritage List, though thirty-nine buildings and monuments in the village around it are, and no licensing record was found.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/tower-inn-slapton-148638 | https://www.thetowerinnslapton.com/ | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1317950&resourceID=5 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1317950 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1428829", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-tower-inn-slapton/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-yew-tree-inn-westbere", "name": "Ye Olde Yew Tree Inn", "city": "Westbere", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1348, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1085489)", "top100_rank": 65, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Yew Tree gives 1348, the plague year, and CAMRA repeats a 14th-century date. Historic England reads the fabric as probably C15 in its easternmost part, with a moulded dragon post, diagonal ground-floor braces, a jettied window bay and an original arched doorcase — good late-medieval carpentry, but not 1348, and the listing says nothing about drinking. No licence or record from the 14th century was traced, so the date stands as tradition. The rest of the building is later, weatherboarded and much extended.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1085489 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-yew-tree-westbere-132788 | https://www.yewtreewestbere.co.uk/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol9/pp68-74 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1871379", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-yew-tree-inn-westbere/" }, { "slug": "the-angel-inn-addington", "name": "The Angel Inn", "city": "Addington", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1350, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 66, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1350 is KentOnline's, in a 2021 survey of Kent's oldest pubs, which says the Angel was a hostelry as long ago as 1350 without naming a record. The pub's own site and CAMRA's Kent branch both say only that the building is 14th-century and the oldest in the village. No documentary evidence of early use as an inn has been published.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/angel-addington-172448 | https://kent.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=287818 | https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/which-pub-is-the-oldest-in-kent-256179/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol4/pp542-548 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/291671", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-angel-inn-addington/" }, { "slug": "the-barley-mow-clifton-hampden", "name": "The Barley Mow", "city": "Clifton Hampden", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1352, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1352, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 67, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1352 is carved on the building: the listing records a panel dated 1352 to the right of centre on the front, so the date is the house's own assertion rather than Historic England's dating of the cruck frame, which the listing leaves undated apart from C19 and C20 alterations. The thatched timber-framed building is read as mid-14th century, but its use as an inn is only documented much later, notably in Victorian Thames guides and Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889).", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley_Mow,_Clifton_Hampden | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/barley-mow-clifton-hampden-143668 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/272006 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1047903", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-barley-mow-clifton-hampden/" }, { "slug": "the-sheep-heid-inn-edinburgh", "name": "The Sheep Heid Inn", "city": "Edinburgh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1360, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (LB30077)", "top100_rank": 68, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "No documentary support for 1360 was found. The listed building is essentially 18th-century, and the James VI snuffbox story is tradition. Anthony Cooke's history of the Scottish pub finds no surviving purpose-built inn older than the 17th century.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_Heid_Inn | https://www.scotlandspubsandbars.co.uk/location/the-sheep-heid-inn/ | https://www.thesheepheidedinburgh.co.uk/ | https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-of-drinking/which-is-the-oldest-pub-in-scotland/00FC5807A162E376F38A30E271E8FB12 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/sheep-heid-inn-edinburgh-150996 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB30077 | https://archive.org/details/cassellsoldnewed02granuoft | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/663711", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-sheep-heid-inn-edinburgh/" }, { "slug": "the-old-crown-birmingham", "name": "The Old Crown", "city": "Birmingham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1368, "earliest_documented": 1626, "gap_years": 258, "building_year": 1450, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": 69, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Old Crown keeps the 1368 itself: it held a 655th birthday in September 2023 and calls itself Birmingham's oldest pub. The date is unconfirmed; the timber-framed building is dated to the later 15th century, with evidence pointing to about 1492, and was noted by Leland in 1538. The earliest documented use as an inn is 1626, with 'the sign of the Crowne' recorded from 1666.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Crown,_Birmingham | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-crown-birmingham-121208 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/777588 | https://web.archive.org/web/20231201233228/https://www.theoldcrown.com/news/were-celebrating-our-655-year-heritage-with-a-huge-birthday-party-historical-exhibition-this-week/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-crown-birmingham/" }, { "slug": "the-brocket-arms-ayot-st-lawrence", "name": "The Brocket Arms", "city": "Ayot St Lawrence", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1378, "earliest_documented": 1694, "gap_years": 316, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building (NHLE 1101091)", "top100_rank": 70, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Nobody states 1378. The pub's own site says the inn was built in the 14th century and was the monastic quarters for the Norman church until the Reformation, but gives no year; CAMRA reads the frame as 16th-century and records the first reference to a licence in 1694; Historic England, as Wikipedia relays, dates the timber frame to probably the early 16th century while noting that an earlier date has been claimed, without saying by whom. So the century is the pub's and the year is nobody's.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/brocket-arms-ayot-st-lawrence-192311 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brocket_Arms | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol3/pp59-63 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/182746", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-brocket-arms-ayot-st-lawrence/" }, { "slug": "the-blue-anchor-inn-east-aberthaw", "name": "The Blue Anchor Inn", "city": "East Aberthaw", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1380, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Cadw 13614)", "top100_rank": 71, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw notes the 'Est. 1380' claim but dates the thatched limestone house to the mid-16th century. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales records the same house as an inn in its national database and adds a reading of its own: it was probably built as a house, and its position and the way it grew suggest it became a public house early in its life. Two bodies therefore date the standing building two centuries after the year on the sign, and no 14th-century record of an alehouse here is cited by either, so the 1380 is recorded as tradition rather than as a building of the claimed age. The fire of 2004 destroyed the roof and part of the interior.", "sources": "https://www.blueanchoraberthaw.com/ | https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300013614 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Anchor_Inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/blue-anchor-east-aberthaw-127949 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/966136 | https://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/18058", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-blue-anchor-inn-east-aberthaw/" }, { "slug": "turf-tavern-oxford", "name": "Turf Tavern", "city": "Oxford", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1381, "earliest_documented": 1790, "gap_years": 409, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 72, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1381 date used by the operator is not supported by published records; the historian H. E. Salter, working through Oxford’s deeds in 1926, found it first recorded as a public house around the end of the eighteenth century, under the name the Spotted Cow. That is the earliest record here, and it is six centuries after the date on the sign.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turf_Tavern | https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/oxfordshire/turf-tavern | https://oxfordhistory.org.uk/city_wall/05_holywell.html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/268400", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/turf-tavern-oxford/" }, { "slug": "the-crown-inn-chiddingfold", "name": "The Crown Inn", "city": "Chiddingfold", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1383, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1350, "building_year_source": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1044569)", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1044569)", "top100_rank": 73, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn says it dates to the 14th century and popular histories give 1383, linking it to pilgrims travelling between Winchester and Canterbury and to a stay by Edward VI in 1552. No primary documentation was located in this research.", "sources": "https://www.thecrownchiddingfold.com/ | https://www.historic-uk.com/Blog/Twelve-Oldest-Inns-In-England/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1044569 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/crown-inn-chiddingfold-150288 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp10-16 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/175835", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-crown-inn-chiddingfold/" }, { "slug": "plough-harrow-monknash", "name": "Plough & Harrow", "city": "Monknash", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1383, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1600, "building_year_source": "https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300013312-plough-and-harrow-ph-including-front-garden-walls-st-donats", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw source ID 13312)", "top100_rank": 74, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1383 on the pub's own page belongs to the monastic grange at Monknash, the richest estate of the Cistercian abbey at Neath, whose barn and dovecote are separately listed a field away. The listing describes the pub itself as an early seventeenth-century lobby-entry house, extended early in the eighteenth, and the pub's own history agrees that a lobby-entry house of that kind was built after the dissolution of 1536. No record of drinking-house use in the fourteenth century has been traced.", "sources": "https://www.ploughandharrowmonknash.co.uk/about | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/plough-harrow-monknash-127962 | https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300013312-plough-and-harrow-ph-including-front-garden-walls-st-donats | https://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/19355 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1274040", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/plough-harrow-monknash/" }, { "slug": "the-george-inn-norton-st-philip", "name": "The George Inn", "city": "Norton St Philip", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1397, "earliest_documented": 1432, "gap_years": 35, "building_year": 1430, "building_year_source": "Dendrochronology", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade I listed (NHLE 1174953)", "top100_rank": 75, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England regards it as probably the earliest surviving purpose-built inn, erected by Hinton Priory. The claimed 1397 licence is not itself verified, but tree-ring dates of 1430-32 and its medieval function as an inn for the priory's wool fairs are well documented, and the earliest documented use recorded here is that tree-ring date. The Grade I list entry, written in 1968, disagrees with the tree-ring reading about one part of the building: it calls the ground floor and rear 14th or 15th-century coursed Doulting rubble, which matches, but dates the jettied timber-framed frontage to the 16th century and says it was added after a fire, where the dendrochronology puts those upper floors at 1430-32. Inside it records open stone fireplaces, an open timber roof with wind braces, a galleried courtyard paved with setts and wall paintings probably of the 16th century.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_George_Inn,_Norton_St_Philip | https://heritagecalling.com/2022/12/22/what-is-the-oldest-pub-or-inn-in-england/ | https://pubgallery.co.uk/2022/03/03/britains-ancient-pubs-or-are-they/ | https://butcombe.com/the-george-inn-somerset/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1757592 | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1174953&resourceID=5", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-george-inn-norton-st-philip/" }, { "slug": "royal-oak-cardington", "name": "Royal Oak", "city": "Cardington", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": 1800, "gap_years": 400, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1055612)", "top100_rank": 76, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Royal Oak is reputed to be the longest continuously licensed pub in Shropshire, and CAMRA gives it a 15th-century date. Historic England reads the building as a mid-C17 timber-framed house, later an inn, with a former stable and coach house alongside and a pump outside listed in its own right. The Victoria County History of Shropshire agrees about the building and answers the licensing: it names the Royal Oak among the late 16th and early 17th-century timber-framed houses of Cardington village, and dates its licence to about 1800, the same decade as the New Inn by the vicarage. Alesellers are recorded in the parish at Cardington, Lydley Hayes, Plaish and Willstone in the early 17th century, and the county history names no tavern in the parish earlier than one at Enchmarsh in 1256, not here. So the house is old and the licence is Georgian, and nothing supports drinking here in the 15th century.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1055612 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/royal-oak-cardington-145028 | https://www.at-the-oak.com/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol10/pp22-44 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/187603", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/royal-oak-cardington/" }, { "slug": "prince-of-wales-kenfig", "name": "Prince of Wales", "city": "Kenfig", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": 1886, "gap_years": 486, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 77, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA's guide entry says this inn dates from the 15th century; CAMRA's own heritage record, and Wikipedia's account of Kenfig, describe a building that began as the Kenfig Corporation guildhall, raised on pillars in the early 17th century and largely rebuilt in 1808, serving as town hall, courthouse and even a mortuary for sailors washed ashore, with the judges' benches and some 17th-century panelling still in the rooms. Thomas Gray's history of Kenfig, published in 1909, puts the order the other way about: he prints the schedule of the scheme that wound the corporation up in 1886, which lets 'the public house called the Prince of Wales Inn' with a garden, a pond and a field to Mrs Yorath for ten pounds a year, and he says the inn had in recent years become the town hall of the borough. That schedule is the earliest record traced of drink sold here. Nothing found records drinking here in the 15th century. The Kenfig Corporation Trust still owns it and gives the rents to local groups.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/prince-of-wales-kenfig-127903 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenfig | https://archive.org/details/buriedcityofkenf00grayrich | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1081422", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/prince-of-wales-kenfig/" }, { "slug": "the-chequers-inn-lamberhurst", "name": "The Chequers Inn", "city": "Lamberhurst", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1100271)", "top100_rank": 78, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Chequers calls itself one of the oldest 15th-century village inns in Kent. Historic England describes a hall house of C16 or earlier date, much extended in the early C18 and again in the early C19, tile-hung above painted brick with a five-bay front of casements. Its listed outbuildings — a stable block and an outhouse — were added to the list in 1989. Nothing was found to place drinking here in the 15th century, so the claim rests on the age of the frame rather than on a document.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1100271 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/chequers-lamberhurst-128569 | https://chequersinnlamberhurst.co.uk/ | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp294-310 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1805350", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-chequers-inn-lamberhurst/" }, { "slug": "the-old-bell-rye", "name": "The Old Bell", "city": "Rye", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1251623)", "top100_rank": 79, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA gives the Old Bell a 15th-century date and Rye tells of a smugglers' passage running from here to the Mermaid Inn. Historic England is unhelpfully brief: a timber-framed building sharing a roof span with number 32, probably one house originally, its front much altered, with a mock-Tudor extension added about 1930. CAMRA's own heritage note records that the pub was tiny until Star Brewery bought and demolished the warehouse next door, and that most of the fittings date from a 1934 refit. A Rye historian working from the town's records in 1847 lists the inns of the town in the mid-18th century — the Bull Head, the George, the Fortune, the Dolphin and the Lyon — and no Bell is among them. So the frame may well be late medieval; nothing dates it, and nothing records drinking here in the 1400s.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1251623 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-bell-inn-rye-182764 | https://www.oldbellrye.co.uk/ | https://archive.org/details/historyantiquiti00holliala | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/781302", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-bell-rye/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-george-inn-christchurch", "name": "Ye Olde George Inn", "city": "Christchurch", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1110123), first listed 12 February 1976 under the statutory address Ye Old George Inne, Castle Street", "top100_rank": 80, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA describes a Grade II listed 15th-century coaching inn, rebuilt after the Civil War with stone said to have come from Christchurch Castle. The listing it points at has now been read, and it will not date the frame. Historic England, which listed the house on 12 February 1976 as Ye Old George Inne, Castle Street, calls it a timber-framed building refaced in the 18th century with painted brick: two storeys, three narrow first-floor sashes in moulded flush frames with late 19th-century glazing, a modillion eaves cornice and a tiled roof, a wide carriage archway through the middle of the ground floor, rear ranges east and west of a courtyard, and stone flags along the street front. It names no century for the timber frame, says nothing about castle stone, and records that the entrance door west of the archway is structurally part of No 76 High Street. The house is listed partly for group value at the crossing of the town's main streets. So the only authority for 15th-century fabric is CAMRA's description, and no early licence has been traced. A grade B says fabric of the claimed age is documented; here it is asserted rather than documented, and the grade falls to C.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-george-inn-christchurch-149473 | https://www.socialpubandkitchen.co.uk/ye-old-george-inn-christchurch | https://web.archive.org/web/20211209215733/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1110123 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1351891", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-george-inn-christchurch/" }, { "slug": "bremer-ratskeller-bremen", "name": "Bremer Ratskeller", "city": "Bremen", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1405, "earliest_documented": 1405, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1405, "building_year_source": "German Wikipedia", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Under monument protection since 1973; the town hall above is part of the Bremen Town Hall and Roland World Heritage site", "top100_rank": 81, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A cellar restaurant under the town hall; its drinks card prices German wine by the glass and beer from the tap.", "evidence_notes": "Bremen's council held the privilege of selling wine from 1330, and an ordinance of 1342 restricted the trade to wine lords the council appointed, which is how the city kept the price and took the duty. The house dates itself from 1405: with the building of the town hall that year the city's wine cellar moved into its vaults to supply the citizens, and two sorts of Rhine wine were poured, the common and the better, at two prices. That is wine sold to the public on these premises at the claimed date, although no charter naming 1405 was read here and the year is also the year the town hall was begun. The rooms grew around the trade — the Apostelkeller, the Senatszimmer and the Priölken between 1550 and 1600, a room called the Rose for the best bottles, where a Rüdesheimer of 1653 still lies, and the Bacchuskeller and the Hauffsaal in 1620. The four carved show-casks in the historic hall were given between 1723 and 1760 to Bremen's mayors, who were also its wine lords. The hall above was inscribed as a World Heritage site with the Roland statue in 2004, and German Wikipedia records monument protection since 1973. The cellar's eating rooms are let to a Bremen hotel while the wine business belongs to the city, which sells about 650 German wines, so the first question needed answering rather than assuming: its own drinks card prices German wine by the fifth of a litre as well as by the bottle and lists beer from the tap, and a survey of the house records it open an hour before the kitchen starts and after the kitchen stops.", "sources": "https://www.ratskeller-bremen.de/wir/geschichte-gastronomie/ | https://www.ratskeller-bremen.de/essen-trinken/getraenkekarte/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremer_Ratskeller | https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1087/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/521908858", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bremer-ratskeller-bremen/" }, { "slug": "schlenkerla-bamberg", "name": "Schlenkerla", "city": "Bamberg", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1405, "earliest_documented": 1678, "gap_years": 273, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Baudenkmal D-4-61-000-85 in the Bavarian monument list; the adjoining Haus unter den Störchen is covered by D-4-61-000-83, the former Dominican monastery; within the Bamberg old town World Heritage Site", "top100_rank": 82, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1405 record is a property matter: the house Zum Blauen Löwen was finally separated from Unter den Störchen and Fritz Vernbach appears as its owner. The brewery's own chronicle places the first documentary mention of the brewhouse as a business in its own right, with its own brewing and serving rights, in 1677/78, and admits the first landlord is disputed — the cupbearer Martin Bachalt or Jakob Schneider; by 1685 the cooper Pankraz Kratzer holds the tavern and brewhouse. The 1410 item often quoted is the coopers' guild oath book, a rule binding the whole trade about hanging out sign boards, not a record of this house. German Wikipedia's 1538 date is the year the cooper Asmus Schneider bought the neighbouring property.", "sources": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlenkerla | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlenkerla | https://www.schlenkerla.de/ | https://www.schlenkerla.de/schlenkerla/chronik/chronik.html | https://www.geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_461000.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/schlenkerla-bamberg/" }, { "slug": "george-dragon-beaumaris", "name": "George & Dragon", "city": "Beaumaris", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1410, "earliest_documented": 1770, "gap_years": 360, "building_year": 1541, "building_year_source": "Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Coflein site 254, publishing the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory report for the Dating Old Welsh Houses project: felling dates winter 1536/7 to spring 1541", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Cadw 5617)", "top100_rank": 83, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw listed the house Grade II* on 23 September 1950 and dated it probably 1610, from a date recorded on a roof truss in the 1930s and since concealed; it was originally timber-framed with a jettied upper storey, and the present front is a twentieth-century remodelling after the pub absorbed the house and shop to the south. The 1410 the house is known by is raised lettering on a rendered band between the storeys, which Cadw records as an inscription and not as a date for the building. Tree-ring dating settles the frame between those two years and agrees with neither: the beams and joists were felled between the winter of 1536/7 and the spring of 1541, so the range went up about 1541, and the 1610 belongs to the painted truss and the wall paintings rather than to the building. The house history published with that dating gives 1771 for its earliest deed and an 1826 publican's recognizance for its earliest licence, and repeats the local account that the building of 1410 was a merchant's house. The George and Dragon is shown on the town plan of 1829 and the Ordnance Survey of 1889; Robinsons says it was built in 1410, a century and a third before the timber was felled.", "sources": "https://www.robinsonsbrewery.com/pubs/george-dragon-beaumaris/ | https://www.northwalesholidaycottages.co.uk/other-information/blog/things-to-do/historic-pubs-of-north-wales/ | https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/north-waless-oldest-pubsand-ghosts-14818052 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=5617 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/116501 | https://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/254 | https://www.coflein.gov.uk/media/79/620/dcp2013_036_02.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/george-dragon-beaumaris/" }, { "slug": "the-three-chimneys-biddenden", "name": "The Three Chimneys", "city": "Biddenden", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1420, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed, first listed 20 June 1967 (list entry 1346283)", "top100_rank": 84, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the pub's own: its history page says the building dates from circa 1420 and the home page gives it 600 years. Historic England lists the house Grade II and describes it as a cottage, now a public house: 16th-century, timber-framed and roughcast, with 18th-century alterations and extensions and a 20th-century range at the rear. That puts the walls a century later than the 15th-century date CAMRA gives and than the 1420 that circulates, and it has the building starting as a cottage rather than an inn. No record of drink being sold here has been traced, and the listing gives no date for the change of use.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/three-chimneys-biddenden-172550 | https://kent.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=287920 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1346283 | https://www.thethreechimneys.co.uk/history | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/67830", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-three-chimneys-biddenden/" }, { "slug": "cittie-of-yorke-london", "name": "Cittie of Yorke", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1430, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1923, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": 85, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is made on the pub's own sign — 'Established as the site of a public house in 1430' — which On London quotes; Samuel Smith's, which runs the house, publishes no date on its website. The claim is not supported by a cited record. The cellars are associated with a 17th-century coffee house and the present building is a 1920s Tudor-style rebuild.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/cittie-of-yorke-london-125495 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cittie_of_Yorke | https://www.onlondon.co.uk/vic-keegan-the-long-bar-and-longer-backstory-of-high-holborns-cittie-of-yorke/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1660829 | https://opendata.camden.gov.uk/Business/Camden-Licensing-Register/rv9z-rsui", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cittie-of-yorke-london/" }, { "slug": "the-kings-wark-edinburgh", "name": "The King's Wark", "city": "Edinburgh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1434, "earliest_documented": 1613, "gap_years": 179, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category A listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB27890), added 14 December 1970 and the record updated in 2022, under the statutory address 36 and 37 Shore and 59-61 (odd nos) Bernard Street", "top100_rank": 86, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The bar takes its name and its date from the King's Wark, the royal arsenal and storehouse James I of Scotland began building on the Shore in 1434. That complex is documented in the royal accounts through the 15th and 16th centuries, was burnt by the English army in 1544 and its tower, drawn by Slezer in 1693, has since been demolished. Drink enters the record in 1613: James VI's grant of the Wark to Bernard Lindsay, his chamber child, licensed four taverns within the buildings alongside the tennis court, and the place was used that way until Edinburgh's magistrates took it over as a weigh-house in 1649. An inn on the site is separately documented in 1623. So 1434 dates a royal building rather than a house of drink, and the taverns follow nearly two centuries later. Historians of Leith writing in the 19th century could not say which part of the complex Lindsay's taverns occupied, so the date belongs to the ground rather than to the corner house standing on it now. The national designations, which this page had not consulted, say the same thing from the other end. Historic Environment Scotland lists the corner Category A as 36 and 37 Shore and 59-61 Bernard Street, added in December 1970 with the record updated in 2022, and dates it early in the 18th century, possibly incorporating earlier remains: a two-storey and attic gabled corner tenement, harled with sandstone margins, with the public house at ground floor and a restoration by Robert Hurd & Partners between 1972 and 1978. Its statement of interest calls these among the few early buildings in Leith to have survived, and says they occupy, and formed part of, the site of the King's Wark. The nearest dated stone is next door: a doorpiece at No. 37 Shore with a swan-neck pediment and a cartouche dated 1711, taken into Waterview House when that was built about 2004. The register therefore ties the ground to the royal complex and the walls to the century after Lindsay's taverns.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Wark | https://www.thekingswarkpub.com/about/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/kings-wark-edinburgh-150755 | https://archive.org/details/cassellsoldnewed03granuoft | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB27890 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/662922 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC643097", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-kings-wark-edinburgh/" }, { "slug": "al-brindisi-ferrara", "name": "Al Brindisi", "city": "Ferrara", "country": "Italy", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1435, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 87, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "An enoteca with a kitchen: wine is poured by the glass from eleven in the morning, and on Mondays and Tuesdays it takes no bookings at all.", "evidence_notes": "The 1435 is lettered across the enoteca's own front page — \"Enoteca al 'Brindisi' già Hostaria del Chiucchiolino, a.d.1435\" — and its origin is a Guinness Book of Records entry, which the house reprints on the page where it collects its press: from the 1984 edition to the 2002 one Guinness called this the oldest osteria in the world and said the first written record of it dates from 1435, when the osteria was already famous. Guinness names no such record and neither does anybody since. A Ferrarese history of the house in the Storie di Pianura series of historic shops credits the local writer Gianni Pazzi with fixing the year on Ferrara's statutes of 1435 against watering and mismeasuring wine, which regulate a trade across a city rather than these premises, and dates the tavern's fame to the following century. MuseoFerrara, the city council's own record of Ferrara place by place, repeats 1435 as the opening year and names no document for it either; what it sets out instead is literary. Ariosto puts the Gorgadello in his second Satire, among the places where Moschino and fra Gualengo eat fat capons, and in La Lena, first performed in the Castello Estense in 1528, where Corbolo speaks of men coming out of Gorgadello drunk. Ercole Bentivoglio, in Satires printed in 1540, names the Gorgadello and the Chiucchiolino in the same line — the nickname the house still trades under. All of that names the street, which used to be Via Gorgadello, rather than these premises, so no year is recorded here as documented, and the grade is C. Two other things are worth setting against the claims. Girolamo Melchiorri's study of Ferrara's street names says the street itself was only formed after the new cathedral of 1135, when the drainage ditch beside the new quarter north of it became a road — so the enoteca's English statement that it was \"certainly already open in the year 1100\" for the men building the cathedral puts a tavern in a street that did not yet exist. And a published history of the street, following Melchiorri and Lucio Scardino, dates an osteria famous for its wine in this lane from the sixteenth century, which is a century later than the year on the sign.", "sources": "https://www.albrindisi.net/ | https://www.albrindisi.net/dicono-di-noi.html | https://www.estense.com/?p=159129 | https://www.italia.it/en/emilia-romagna/ferrara/antica-enoteca-al-brindisi | https://www.storiedipianura.it/territorio-e-cultura/botteghe-storiche/531-la-dove-ferrara-alza-il-bicchiere-storia-dellenoteca-al-brindisi.html | https://www.lucianopignataro.it/a/ferrara-enoteca-al-brindisi-gia-hostaria-del-chiucchiolino-a-d-1435/31557/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1249699754 | https://www.museoferrara.it/view/s/24cd010e83f84e5299a4127b94ca718c | https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Guglielmo_degli_Adelardi", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/al-brindisi-ferrara/" }, { "slug": "the-bell-inn-nottingham", "name": "The Bell Inn", "city": "Nottingham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1437, "earliest_documented": 1638, "gap_years": 201, "building_year": 1420, "building_year_source": "Dendrochronology", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1271441, listed 12 May 1982)", "top100_rank": 88, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1437 is the pub's own: the Bell's website, archived in 2016 before Greene King's pages replaced it, said the inn dates from around 1437 and is the oldest in the city, while giving c.1420 for the dendrochronological dating of its timbers. The listing, made on 12 May 1982 and drawing on Pevsner's Nottinghamshire, reads the fabric as late 15th-century behind an 1820s front, with substantial timber framing, stop-chamfered ceiling beams, crown post roofs and rock-hewn cellars — later than the tree-ring reading of about 1420 by half a century. It also states that the building has been a public house since the middle of the 18th century, which is later again than the 1638 bequest of half the inn's rental income by Robert Sherwin, the earliest written reference Wikipedia's account can name. This page takes 1638 as the earliest record of the house as an inn and notes that the listing will not go back beyond the 1750s; the alehouse of 1539, after the Whitefriars refectory was dissolved, is a story nothing traced documents.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Inn,_Nottingham | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/bell-inn-nottingham-162702 | https://heritagecalling.com/2022/12/22/what-is-the-oldest-pub-or-inn-in-england/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20160305092939/http://www.bellinnnottingham.co.uk/about/ | https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1271441&resourceID=5 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/217607", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bell-inn-nottingham/" }, { "slug": "the-luttrell-arms-dunster", "name": "The Luttrell Arms", "city": "Dunster", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1443, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1443, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1057611)", "top100_rank": 89, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1443 is the hotel's own: its history page, archived in 2016, says the Luttrell Arms occupies the site of three ancient houses recorded from 1443, when two were conveyed to Richard Luttrell by William Dodesham, and adds that nothing shows how old those houses were or what part they play in the building standing today. The Grade II* building is late 15th century. The tradition that it was a guest house of the abbots of Cleeve is unproven, and the date it first became an inn was not established.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luttrell_Arms | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1057611 | https://www.exmoorher.co.uk/Designation/DEM3050 | https://web.archive.org/web/20160331140334/http://www.luttrellarms.co.uk/history | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1807900", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-luttrell-arms-dunster/" }, { "slug": "cantina-do-spade-venice", "name": "Cantina Do Spade", "city": "Venice", "country": "Italy", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1448, "earliest_documented": 1448, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 90, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A bacaro with a dining room behind it; wine by the glass and cicchetti are served standing at the counter.", "evidence_notes": "The 1448 is the house's own, lettered across its site as \"dal 1448\", and its history page attributes the year to Giuseppe Tassini's Curiosità veneziane of 1872, which cites Carle de Zuane, hosto all'insegna delle Spade. The citation is reported independently by Italian writers on Venetian food and topography, who add that the same man was gastaldo of the confraternity of innkeepers that met at San Matteo di Rialto in 1488, and that the Venetian cadastre of 1566 lists an osteria delle do spade a S. Matteo, with two ground-floor shops, belonging to the Foscari family and leased to an innkeeper called Battista. Casanova's memoirs put a Carnival supper at l'osteria delle Spade in 1745. What all of that dates is the sign rather than a street number: the reason for reading it as this house is that the calle, the sottoportego and the bridge outside all still carry the name Do Spade, and that the cadastral entry places the osteria at San Matteo, a hundred metres away. Nothing has been traced about the age of the standing fabric. Drink without a meal is not in question here: the house serves wine by the glass at a high counter with cicchetti along it, and the room in front of the counter is where people stand.", "sources": "https://cantinadospade.com/en/our-history/ | https://www.dissapore.com/ristoranti/cantina-do-spade-a-venezia-recensione-di-un-bacaro-storico/ | https://www.appuntidizelda.it/cantina-do-spade-venezia-recensione/ | https://www.conoscerevenezia.it/?p=63051 | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4431132539 | https://www.storienogastronomiche.it/cantina-do-spade/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cantina-do-spade-venice/" }, { "slug": "new-inn-gloucester", "name": "New Inn", "city": "Gloucester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1450, "earliest_documented": 1450, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1450, "building_year_source": "Historic England listing", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade I listed (NHLE 1245714)", "top100_rank": 91, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The New Inn gives 1450, when the monk John Twyning built it for St Peter's Abbey to lodge visitors — an inn from the start rather than a house that later took a licence. No document states that year: Historic England lists it Grade I as a mid-C15 inn of four ranges around a galleried courtyard, the most complete survival of its kind in Britain, and the Victoria County History of Gloucestershire says the same without a year — \"The New Inn, built in the mid 15th century, has a galleried courtyard\" — adding that its jetties ran round two sides on elaborately carved corner posts. So the century is documented by scholarship and the year is the inn's own. Historic England also notes an earlier inn on the site. Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen from the gallery in 1553. The story that it housed pilgrims to Edward II's tomb was first written down in the 18th century and may be later colour.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1245714 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Inn,_Gloucester | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/new-inn-hotel-gloucester-171563 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol4/pp63-72 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1759502", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/new-inn-gloucester/" }, { "slug": "the-old-court-house-inn-st-aubin", "name": "The Old Court House Inn", "city": "St Aubin", "country": "Jersey", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1450, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1611, "building_year_source": "Jersey Historic Environment Record (Jersey Heritage), heritage asset 0100180", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building BR0180 (Government of Jersey); Jersey Historic Environment Record, primary reference 0100180", "top100_rank": 92, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1450 is Visit Jersey's, which says the rear building, the original court house, has parts dating back to 1450. The Liberation Group, which runs the inn, claims only history dating back to the 15th century, and CAMRA's Channel Islands guide says about 400 years old. Sources disagree and no documentary date for inn use was found.", "sources": "https://www.jersey.com/inspire-me/inspiration/historic-pubs-in-jersey/ | https://channelislands.camra.org.uk/pubguide | https://stayinapub.co.uk/the-old-court-house-inn-st-aubin-jersey/ | https://her.jerseyheritage.org/report/503198d0-116c-0138-914e-740f24312a1c | https://her.jerseyheritage.org/report/507da8b0-116c-0138-9150-740f24312a1c | https://www.liberationgroup.com/the-old-court-house-inn/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-court-house-inn-st-aubin/" }, { "slug": "kings-head-aylesbury", "name": "King's Head", "city": "Aylesbury", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1455, "earliest_documented": 1455, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1160205)", "top100_rank": 93, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn dates itself to 1455, and a document stands behind it. A conveyance of 18 December 1455, between the London wool merchant William Wandeford and Ralph Verney, names the newly built Kyngeshede along with a cellar, a shop and cottages. Historic England's Grade II* entry describes C15 to C17 fabric with a C15 left-hand gable, and the great hall is dated to the 1470s, so building and record agree within a generation. The National Trust has owned the inn since 1925 and the Chiltern Brewery runs the bar.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1160205 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Head_Inn,_Aylesbury | https://kingsheadaylesbury.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/kings-head-aylesbury-115046 | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol3/pp1-11 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/370062", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kings-head-aylesbury/" }, { "slug": "the-golf-tavern-edinburgh", "name": "The Golf Tavern", "city": "Edinburgh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1456, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the tavern in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of Bruntsfield on 17 September 2026 returned twenty-six listed buildings, among them the tenements at 1-19 Barclay Place next door (LB28268, category B) and the Barclay church and hall opposite (LB26720, category A), and nothing for the tavern", "top100_rank": 94, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1456 comes from secondary lists and seems to attach to traditions of golf on Bruntsfield Links rather than to any documented tavern; no licence, deed or directory entry for it has been traced. The national designations have now been searched around Wright's Houses: within a hundred and fifty metres they hold twenty-six listed buildings, including the tenements at 1-19 Barclay Place next door and the Barclay church and its hall opposite, and no entry for the Golf Tavern. So nothing official dates this building either, and the 1456 stands as golfing legend.", "sources": "https://www.oldest.org/food/oldest-pubs-in-edinburgh/ | https://www.golftavern.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-golf-tavern-edinburgh-150098 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/140663 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB28268", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-golf-tavern-edinburgh/" }, { "slug": "cafe-de-presse-geraardsbergen", "name": "Café De Presse", "city": "Geraardsbergen", "country": "Belgium", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1459, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within the protected townscape of the Brandstraat, designated 10 March 1994; listed as established architectural heritage since 20 June 2023 (inventory object 8455)", "top100_rank": 95, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1459 comes from a 2022 report in Made in Oost-Vlaanderen, which says that in 1459 the façade of the house, then called De Ghulden Cop, held the first Manneken Pis figure, and adds that whether De Presse is the oldest café in Flanders is a question for historians. That shows a named house on the market, not an early tavern licence; no documentary proof of 15th-century café use was found. Whether it is open today is a different question from how old it is, and the answer is not one we can give: Belgium’s register of businesses, standing at 17 September 2026, holds no live business at Markt 50, only five ceased branches of this name. A register can lag a new tenant, so it is left as trading rather than closed, but anyone travelling to Geraardsbergen for it should check first.", "sources": "https://www.made-in.be/oost-vlaanderen/michael-behiels-heropent-de-deuren-van-oudste-cafe-van-vlaanderen/ | https://www.opcafegaan.be/geraardsbergen/cafe-de-presse | https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/8455 | https://web.archive.org/web/20241127125232/https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/8455 | https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis_van_Geraardsbergen | https://kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/zoekadresform.html?actionLU=Zoek&straatgemeente1=Markt&huisnummer=50&postcod1=9500&postgemeente1=Geraardsbergen", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-de-presse-geraardsbergen/" }, { "slug": "osteria-del-sole-bologna", "name": "Osteria del Sole", "city": "Bologna", "country": "Italy", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1465, "earliest_documented": 1712, "gap_years": 247, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": 96, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The osteria dates itself to 1465 and says the earliest documents naming it were found in the Archivio di Stato in Bologna by the food historian Alessandro Molinari Pradelli in 1978, among them a plan of the premises. We have not seen those documents, and no source outside the osteria cites them, so the year stays a claim rather than a record. What can be followed is later: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli's printed game of Bologna's osterie, of 1712, lists the Sole, and the present sign is copied from that engraving. The print itself is not hard to reach. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds an impression of it — Gioco Nuovo di Tutte L'Osterie, an etching by Mitelli dated 1712, a plate of about 32 by 49 centimetres, accession 49.70.5, bought with the Elisha Whittelsey Fund in 1949 — so the document behind the sign is catalogued by a museum with no stake in the argument. The Archiginnasio library in Bologna holds the volume it belongs to, and the trade magazine Sala&Cucina described a facsimile of it in January 2025. That is the earliest document we can name, and it names a Sole among Bologna's osterie rather than proving the house at Vicolo Ranocchi is the one. Nothing has been traced about the age of the standing building.", "sources": "https://osteriadelsole.it/storia/ | https://osteriadelsole.it/ | https://www.salaecucina.it/it-it/losteria-del-sole-dal-1465-in-vicolo-dei-ranocchi-a-bologna.aspx | https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/764865", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/osteria-del-sole-bologna/" }, { "slug": "u-medvidku-prague", "name": "U Medvídků", "city": "Prague", "country": "Czechia", "nation": "", "type": "hospoda", "claimed_founded": 1466, "earliest_documented": 1438, "gap_years": -28, "building_year": 1614, "building_year_source": "Date cut into the stone portal beside the house sign of two bears", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within Prague Heritage Reserve (UNESCO World Heritage Site)", "top100_rank": 97, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house is documented in writing from 1404, but that entry names the house of the late Pavel Hubený and has nothing to do with drink: between about 1410 and 1433 his relatives, one of them Nicolaus the soap-boiler, appear to have boiled soap in it. Malt arrives in 1433, when Mikuláš the maltster bought the house and with it, probably, the right to brew, and from 1438 Jakub Starostka brewed here. Jan Nedvídek, who gave the house its name, founded in 1466 the brewery that ran without a break until 1898, when the Old Town brewing houses gave up against the new industrial breweries. The house became a large beer hall, the state took it in the 1950s, and after restitution the bar was enlarged, a hotel built in the Gothic roof and a microbrewery started — the smallest in the country, at 300 hectolitres a year.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Medvídků | https://www.umedvidku.cz/ | https://dbpedia.org/page/U_Medvídků | https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Medvídků | https://ares.gov.cz/ekonomicke-subjekty?ico=25090780 | https://web.archive.org/web/20201206012209/http://www.pivovary.info/prehled/medvidci/medvidci.htm", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/u-medvidku-prague/" }, { "slug": "cafe-t-rozenhoedje-maastricht", "name": "Café 't Rozenhoedje", "city": "Maastricht", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1466, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1733, "building_year_source": "Dutch national register of addresses and buildings", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 26812, entered in the register 30 June 1966", "top100_rank": 98, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The café long used 1486 (painted on the door); local amateur historian Jef Moers argued it was serving drinks 20 years earlier, so it now claims 1466. The archival basis for either date has not been published in the sources checked. Two Dutch state registers date the building instead of the drinking: the national monuments register, which has the house as a protected monument and dates its cornice façade to the early 18th century, and the register of addresses and buildings, which gives the premises at Boschstraat 109 a construction year of 1733 and records the building in use today under an assembly function alongside a dwelling. Both put the fabric nearly three centuries after the year the café claims.", "sources": "https://www.cafetrozenhoedje.nl/ | https://1zuid.nl/nieuws/artikel/oudste-cafe-t-rozenhoedje-blijkt-nog-ouder | https://www.kijkeensnaarboven.nl/en/gevelstenen/in-het-rozenhoedje | https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/26812 | https://service.pdok.nl/lv/bag/wfs/v2_0?service=WFS&version=2.0.0&request=GetFeature&typeNames=bag:verblijfsobject&outputFormat=application/json&filter=%3CFilter%3E%3CPropertyIsEqualTo%3E%3CPropertyName%3Eidentificatie%3C/PropertyName%3E%3CLiteral%3E0935010000000420%3C/Literal%3E%3C/PropertyIsEqualTo%3E%3C/Filter%3E", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-t-rozenhoedje-maastricht/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-bulls-head-inn-beaumaris", "name": "Ye Olde Bulls Head Inn", "city": "Beaumaris", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1472, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Cadw 5601)", "top100_rank": 99, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw listed the inn Grade II* on 23 September 1950 and dates it to the seventeenth century, recording a painted sign that once carried 1617, a rebuilding and enlargement in 1766 lettered on a rainwater head, and only a stair surviving from the earlier house; the plan the building has now is on the town plan of 1829. The 1472 is published by Visit Wales, not by the house: the Inn Collection Group, which has run the inn since the sale reported by North Wales Live, dates it to the fifteenth century without naming a year, and a 2009 beer blog gives 1645. CAMRA carries it as open and calls it a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century coaching inn.", "sources": "https://www.visitwales.com/things-do/food-and-drink/places-eat-and-drink/welsh-inns-pint-past | https://beerbrewer.blogspot.com/2009/01/oldest-pubs-in-wales.html | https://www.inncollectiongroup.com/bulls-head-inn/ | https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/bull-beaumaris-been-sold-owner-24964087 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/bull-beaumaris-146115 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/116472 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=5601 | https://web.archive.org/web/20221129052222/https://www.bullsheadinn.co.uk/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-bulls-head-inn-beaumaris/" }, { "slug": "griechenbeisl-vienna", "name": "Griechenbeisl", "city": "Vienna", "country": "Austria", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1476, "earliest_documented": 1447, "gap_years": -29, "building_year": 1350, "building_year_source": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griechenbeisl", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument (Denkmalschutz), Austria", "top100_rank": 100, "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant serving Viennese cooking.", "evidence_notes": "One of the few houses on this site whose record is older than its claim. The Griechenbeisl says on its own pages that it has been serving guests for 550 years, which puts its founding around 1476; German Wikipedia gives the first documentary mention of the Griechenbeisl as 1447, and the building on the corner as first recorded in 1350. The City of Vienna's own historical encyclopaedia, read on 17 September 2026, is the second publisher and is careful about what it will say: drawing on Felix Czeike's Historisches Lexikon Wien, it describes a late Gothic dwelling house on a deep plot, with a late Gothic oriel and a Baroque front put on in 1709, holding a historic public room, and it records the house name Zum roten Dachel and the trade name Reichenbergerbeisl from the Bohemian cloth merchants who drank here. It dates neither the first mention of the beisl nor the corner house, so the 1447 and the 1350 still rest on the encyclopaedia alone; what it does confirm is a house of late Gothic date, which is the fabric the grade B stands on. The name Griechenbeisl came in during the eighteenth century, when Greek and Levantine merchants settled on the Fleischmarkt — it is from the merchants and not from Greek food. The house today serves Viennese cooking and trades as a restaurant, which is why it is here as a gasthaus rather than excluded: it calls itself a Gasthaus and a Beisl, and a Beisl is a tavern. The first test a house has to pass here — whether the public can be served a drink without ordering a meal — is not answered by any source we have traced; its own menu page lists food only. We have left that open rather than assume it either way.", "sources": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griechenbeisl | https://www.griechenbeisl.at/our-story/ | https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Griechenbeisl", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/griechenbeisl-vienna/" }, { "slug": "a-ginjinha-lisbon", "name": "A Ginjinha", "city": "Lisbon", "country": "Portugal", "nation": "", "type": "ginjinha", "claimed_founded": 1840, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A counter and a hatch, serving one liqueur in a glass, taken standing.", "evidence_notes": "The date is the house's own, printed as \"Desde 1840\" on its front page, and Portuguese Wikipedia records the same: \"Ginjinha Espinheira, fundada em 1840 pelo galego Francisco Espinheira\" — founded by a Galician. No document has been traced behind it, so the grade is C. Lisbon city council's register of historic shops, Lojas com História, was read on 17 September 2026 and carries the house at Largo de São Domingos 8: it says the Ginjinha Espinheira opened in 1840, kept by a Galician of that name, and has held the same character and the same regulars since. That is the year published by a municipal body rather than by the business, which is a different thing from a document and does not lift the grade, but it does take the 1840 out of the house's sole keeping. The register adds something the page could not have got from the house: that this shop and its neighbour Sem Rival, across the square, were what introduced selling over the counter to the local trade, and that the practice spread from here through the city. It also gives the hours as nine in the morning to ten at night every day. What is unusually clear here is the kind of trade: the business says its history is told \"ao balcão\", at the counter, and the counter is the whole of it. There is no dining room to be primarily anything else, which is why a house with no chairs is on a site about old pubs and a wine shop with a kitchen is not.", "sources": "https://ginjinhaespinheira.com/ | https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginjinha | https://lojascomhistoria.pt/lojas/a-ginjinha", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/a-ginjinha-lisbon/" }, { "slug": "abbey-tavern-howth", "name": "Abbey Tavern", "city": "Howth", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The tavern markets itself as a 16th-century building but gives no licensing history or survey evidence; when it first became a drinking house is unknown. The claim names a century and no year, so the ranking sorts it from the century's first year. The building half of the claim now has an answer. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, read through its open data on 17 September 2026, carries record 11359015 under the name The Abbey Tavern at 29 Abbey Street, mapped within a few metres of the house. It describes an attached three-bay two-storey commercial building of about 1850: rendered walls with quoins and a string course, a dentil cornice beneath a parapet, square-headed and segmental-arched windows in moulded plaster surrounds, and a round-headed doorcase with fluted pilasters and a plain fanlight. The survey gives the date range as 1840 to 1860 and the original use as a house. That is a Victorian building, three hundred years after the claim, and the inventory records nothing older on the site.", "sources": "https://www.abbeytavern.ie/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pubs_in_Dublin | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=REG_NO%3D11359015&outFields=REG_NO%2CNAME%2CNUMBER%2CSTREET1%2CTOWN%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO%2CRATING%2CDESCRIPTION&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/abbey-tavern-howth/" }, { "slug": "albany-hotel-albany", "name": "Albany Hotel", "city": "Albany", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1836, "earliest_documented": 1852, "gap_years": 16, "building_year": 1890, "building_year_source": "https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/details/786ce777-d220-4fc2-9339-1e80ee67e144", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "On the City of Albany's Heritage List, adopted 27 October 2020, and in the City's local heritage survey of the same date at the management category Considerable, meaning very important to the heritage of the locality. Category B in the municipal inventory adopted 30 June 2001, which asks for a high level of protection and a heritage assessment before any major redevelopment. Not on Western Australia's State Register of Heritage Places: the place record, number 15571, carries no state registration and no decision of the Heritage Council, and so no register entry or assessment paper", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Two accounts of this corner of York Street are in print and they do not agree, which is the whole of the reason for the grade. The claim, as the Albany Advertiser and the agents selling the freehold put it, is that the site holds Western Australia's first liquor licence of 1836, and the ABC quoted the researcher Suzanne Thompson in 2022 saying the original building was licensed around 1836, became the Horse and Groom and was renamed the Albany Hotel in 1892 — with the reporter's own caveat that records from that era are patchy. The heritage record kept by the City of Albany for the Heritage Council of Western Australia tells it differently and mentions no 1836 at all: Patrick Taylor had a cottage on the land, the original Albany Hotel was built in 1852 by James Cooper on Lot S 108, it decayed into a house known as the Old Stone Jug, and John and Margaret Norrish owned it in the 1880s and gave it the name it has now. That record dates the standing building from 1890, with a refurbishment by Margaret Norrish in 1908, and lists its original and present use as hotel, tavern or inn. It also carries the story the pub is fondest of: a guest book of about 1900 in which a young mining engineer named Herbert Hoover wrote \"Not dead, but sleeping\". The 1852 hotel is therefore the earliest drinking house here that anything cited supports, and the 1836 licence wants a Western Australian licensing record that nobody has produced. The fuller version of that record was read on 18 September 2026 and it carries a run of licensees the summary leaves out. The Norrishes went to Kojonup and let the house to a Mr Schruth; George Stonell took the lease in 1897; by 1902 John William Young, eldest son of the family Young's Siding is named after, held the licence and kept it until he died in July 1908; and the early proprietors after him run Patrick Hennessey in 1908, C. F. Layton in 1910, L. A. Elsegood in 1914, Richard Scott in 1918, Dick Scott in 1919, Frank Lambert and A. J. Martin in 1922 and Louisa Lewis in 1925. Margaret Norrish's refurbishment of 1908 was built by the local contractor Charles F. Layton, and she still owned the hotel when she died in 1930 aged eighty. The record also says what it rests on, which matters more than any of that: its references are a site visit and assessment made by the consultancy Heritage TODAY in 1999 and the Battye Library's general index in 2000. So the 1852 is a heritage consultant's reading of a library index rather than a licensing record, and the 1836 has no document behind it either. The record was created on 17 March 2000 and last touched on 19 May 2022, and its statement of significance claims less than the press does: one of the oldest still existing licensed hotels in Albany and one of the first built, with no mention of the state. It gives the address as 244-248 York Street, a range where the door number alone is printed above. There is nothing further to read from the register, because the house is not on it: the place record shows a municipal heritage listing, no state registration and no decision of the Heritage Council, so there is no register entry and no assessment paper of the kind the Rose and Crown at Guildford carries. That house's record, read the same way on the same night, shows a state registration of 7 October 1997 with both documents attached, which is the control that the papers would have been found here had they existed.", "sources": "https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/printsinglerecord/786ce777-d220-4fc2-9339-1e80ee67e144 | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-23/albany-hotel-was-oldest-hotel-on-the-market/101459046 | https://www.albanyadvertiser.com.au/news/albany-advertiser/running-of-the-albany-hotel-to-change-hands-as-owner-russell-poliwka-selects-local-publican-as-new-tenant-c-22373873 | https://www.historicalbany.com.au/bars-and-pubs | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1411198007 | https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/details/786ce777-d220-4fc2-9339-1e80ee67e144", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/albany-hotel-albany/" }, { "slug": "albion-house-tavern-st-peter-port", "name": "Albion House Tavern", "city": "St Peter Port", "country": "Guernsey", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1780, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1780 is CAMRA's: both its Channel Islands branch guide and its national entry for the house say a tavern has stood on this site since that year, and no deed, licence or directory behind the date has been traced, which is why this is a C. Two other publishers reach the house. The Priaulx Library in St Peter Port has published a Guernsey woman's recollections of the 1860s, printed in the Evening Press in December 1940, which place the Albion Hotel on Church Square with dwelling houses at its west gable and a cider store beneath it — the earliest independent account of the house in trade that we have found, eighty years after the claimed date rather than at it. The Brewery History Society's list of Guernsey Brewery houses records it as Albion House, once the Kosy Korner, selling Guernsey beers in the late 1980s and held on a Liberation tenancy in 2023. Guinness is cited by CAMRA for the house being the closest tavern to a church in the British Isles, a distinction earned by a gargoyle on the Town Church.", "sources": "https://channelislands.camra.org.uk/pubguide | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/albion-house-tavern-st-peter-port-174932 | https://www.priaulxlibrary.co.uk/articles/article/high-street-east-more-reminiscences-1860s | https://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Guernsey_Brewery_Pubs | https://whatpub.com/pubs/GUE/20/albion-house-tavern-st-peter-port", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/albion-house-tavern-st-peter-port/" }, { "slug": "anne-of-cleves-melton-mowbray", "name": "Anne of Cleves", "city": "Melton Mowbray", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1384, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1265121), designated 24 October 1950 as Anne of Cleves House", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Built in 1384 as a house for chantry priests; a tea room in the 20th century and a pub only from the 1996 conversion.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub's own history gives 1384, when the building went up as a house for chantry priests, and Historic England supports that age: mediaeval and later, with a C14 doorway at the rear, C15 buttresses and a C15 stone window. What the pub is candid about is the long gap afterwards. The house was church property to the mid-16th century, briefly Thomas Cromwell's, then a mystery until it became a tea room in the 20th century and was converted to a pub in 1996. So the building is genuinely medieval; the drinking is recent. Historic England's map service dates the listing — entry 1265121, grade II*, designated on 24 October 1950 — and gives the register's name for it, Anne of Cleves House. A house is what the register has always known it as: the designation is forty-six years older than the pub.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1265121 | https://theanneofcleves.com/history/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/anne-of-cleves-melton-mowbray-192197 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1364015", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/anne-of-cleves-melton-mowbray/" }, { "slug": "antigua-taberna-queirolo-lima", "name": "Antigua Taberna Queirolo", "city": "Lima (Pueblo Libre)", "country": "Peru", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1880, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no individual declaration for this house. Peru's Ministry of Culture publishes thirteen heritage map layers and none of them is a register of colonial or republican buildings, so there is no register of this kind to search; a search of the Ministry's own published decisions turned up none for this address, which is weaker than a register read end to end and is all that can be had. The street is inside a zone: Lima's metropolitan zoning ordinance, amended on 8 July 2012, rezones Avenida San Martín 1057 across the avenue and states that the property lies within the monumental zone of the Pueblo Libre district. That zone draws a boundary, names no building and dates none. The house also displays the Blue Shield, the emblem that marks cultural property for protection, which El Comercio reported in July 2026 without naming the decision that granted it", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1880 dates a pulpería — a grocery selling wine, preserves and provisions to the farms around — and the house records the corner becoming only a taberna over the years that followed, without naming a year. The claimed year does not date drink-led trade, so it keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house tells its own story plainly: the Queirolos reached Lima from Genoa about 1877, and in 1880 Santiago Queirolo Raggio opened what it calls the typical pulpería of the period on this corner of Magdalena Vieja, selling groceries, wine and preserves to the estates round about. The corner came in time to be only the taberna, with the family's wine and pisco cellar a few doors along the Jirón San Martín; the vineyards moved south to Cañete in 1963. In its first years the customers were all men, arriving by cart until the tram on Avenida Brasil brought a wider crowd. Spanish Wikipedia's article on the district gives the same 1880 and the same pulpería, and Infobae listed the house among Lima's historic bars in January 2025. Nothing documentary has been read behind the year, so this is a C. Two Peruvian registers and two more newspapers were read on 18 September 2026 and none of them dates the house. The Ministry of Culture publishes thirteen heritage map layers and not one is a register of colonial or republican buildings: they cover prehispanic immovables, world heritage sites, cultural landscapes, indigenous settlements and languages, the Inca road, museums and the certificates that say no archaeology lies under a site. The map server behind them lists no layers to a reader at all. What does place the street is Lima's own zoning: the metropolitan ordinance for this group of districts was amended on 8 July 2012 to rezone Avenida San Martín 1057, across the avenue from the taberna, and the amendment says in terms that the property lies inside the monumental zone of the Pueblo Libre district. A zone draws a boundary, names no building and dates none, and no declaration for this house has been traced among the Ministry's published decisions — a search of its own site rather than an index, so a weaker absence than a register read end to end. The press adds one fact and repeats the rest. El Comercio reported on 12 July 2026 that the house has hung the Blue Shield over one of its doors on Avenida San Martín at the corner of Avenida Manuel Vivanco, the first Lima tavern to carry the emblem, and quoted the founder's descendant Santiago Queirolo Targarona, the firm's general manager; the article names no decision or date behind the award, so what can be said is that the emblem is up and not what put it there. Infobae had given the same 1880 and the same pulpería in January 2024, from an interview rather than a document. That report of July 2026 describes a house busy daily, which is the most recent trading evidence we hold.", "sources": "https://antiguatabernaqueirolo.com/historia/ | https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distrito_de_Pueblo_Libre | https://www.infobae.com/peru/2025/01/16/los-bares-historicos-de-lima-un-recorrido-por-los-clasicos-que-siguen-vivos-en-el-centro-historico/ | https://elcomercio.pe/somos/el-escudo-azul-de-la-taberna-queirolo-la-antigua-taberna-colgo-el-emblema-otorgado-por-la-unesco-que-protege-la-casona-noticia/ | https://www.infobae.com/peru/2024/01/24/antigua-taberna-queirolo-el-historico-bar-limeno-que-fue-testigo-de-la-soledad-de-un-presidente-del-peru-y-vio-nacer-a-su-propio-dueno/ | https://ipdu.pe/ordenanzasyplanos/lince/1017-MML.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/antigua-taberna-queirolo-lima/" }, { "slug": "au-chien-qui-fume-paris", "name": "Au Chien qui Fume", "city": "Paris", "country": "France", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1740, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Inscribed as a historic monument on 23 May 1984 — the shopfront and the interior decoration, including the wooden counter (Mérimée PA00085783)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The building is of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, put up when the rue du Pont-Neuf was cut through to Les Halles, and the café took its ground floor then. The 1740 the encyclopaedia carries cannot date drinking on these premises, so the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A Les Halles bar-restaurant open from eight in the morning until one at night, with the carved counter the state protects.", "evidence_notes": "The 1740 comes from French Wikipedia, which carries it in a summary box with nothing cited behind it, and the house's own site does not repeat it: that site says only that it has cooked in the French tradition for twenty-five years. The Ministry of Culture's notice for the building, which protects it, is plainer still — the rue du Pont-Neuf was cut through in the second half of the nineteenth century to serve Les Halles, number 33 was built for that, and a café took the ground floor. Its dated fields say the same thing without the narrative: the principal building campaign falls in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the building is classed as a restaurant. So the year does not date drinking on these premises, and this is a C. What the notice does record is the front, with its four glass panels each carrying a smoking dog above lettering for onion soup, snails, salmon and the orchestra, and the wooden counter inside, carved with more of them: both were inscribed as a historic monument by order of 23 May 1984, on a site itself inscribed nine years earlier, on 6 August 1975. The counter is documented, but nobody we can read says in words that a visitor is served at it without eating, so that question is left open here.", "sources": "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_chien_qui_fume | https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00085783 | https://www.auchienquifume.com/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/au-chien-qui-fume-paris/" }, { "slug": "au-vieux-spijtigen-duivel-brussels", "name": "Au Vieux Spijtigen Duivel", "city": "Brussels", "country": "Belgium", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Classé — legally protected since 22 April 2010; recorded in the Brussels-Capital Region's inventory of architectural heritage as Urban notice 26736, chaussée d'Alsemberg 621, Uccle", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A Brussels brasserie and estaminet; the bar serves through the afternoon, when the kitchen is shut.", "evidence_notes": "The claim and the record are a long way apart here, and two publishers with no interest in the house have now said so. Paris Match Belgique wrote in January 2026 that the oldest proof of the house's existence dates from the eighteenth century and that the 1500 is legend. It names no archive for either and no year for the eighteenth-century evidence. The Brussels-Capital Region's inventory of architectural heritage, which is the register the region keeps of its own building stock, dates the house at chaussée d'Alsemberg 621 to 1701–1800, types it as an auberge, classes its style as rural architecture and records it as legally protected since 22 April 2010; its notice, numbered 26736 and written up in 2016, names no builder. So the register agrees with the magazine and both disagree with the sign: the fabric is of the eighteenth century, three hundred years after the year the house counts from, and nothing is entered here as a documented year for drink-led trade. The house's own telling is that Charles V stopped at what was then a posting inn five hundred years ago, that the sign was first A l'Ange and changed after the emperor's visit, and that Victor Hugo lingered here during his Brussels exile while Baudelaire wrote his angry verses about the city; it calls itself the oldest estaminet in Brussels, which is a claim and not a finding, and two other Brussels houses on this site make claims of their own. Drink without a meal is answered by the operator's own hours, which separate the two trades: the brasserie is open from half past eleven until midnight, while food service runs from half past eleven to three and again from six, so the middle of the afternoon is drinking time. Its pages carry separate lists for wines and for Belgian beers, and it describes its own customers as people who came for a good Belgian beer as much as for the history.", "sources": "https://www.spijtigenduivel.com/ | https://www.parismatch.be/lifestyle/tendances-et-loisirs/2026/01/18/ce-cafe-est-le-plus-vieux-de-bruxelles-il-aurait-ouvert-au-moyen-age-et-ete-le-repaire-de-grands-noms-de-lhistoire-NA2T5CVMEFFEXBOKUUT3KFFF2E/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/12212890833 | https://monument.heritage.brussels/fr/Uccle/Chaussee_d_Alsemberg/621/26736", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/au-vieux-spijtigen-duivel-brussels/" }, { "slug": "auerbachs-keller-leipzig", "name": "Auerbachs Keller", "city": "Leipzig", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1525, "earliest_documented": 1438, "gap_years": -87, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A cellar restaurant whose Mephisto bar keeps its own hours and pours to anyone who comes down the steps.", "evidence_notes": "The cellar sells itself as being there since 1525 and kept a five-hundredth birthday in 2025. What 1525 dates is a story rather than a deed: a folk tale has the magician Johann Georg Faust riding a barrel up out of this cellar in that year, and two panels painted about 1625 and given to Andreas Bretschneider hang in the Goethe room, which shows how old the telling is rather than how old the house is. The wine trade is older than the claim. German Wikipedia and the Leipzig-Lexikon, a local reference work, both record a wine tap mentioned on this ground in 1438, and the Lexikon calls the house the second-oldest surviving eating house in Leipzig after the Burgkeller. The two disagree by ten years about when the physician and city councillor Heinrich Stromer, called Dr Auerbach after his birthplace, bought the plot — 1519 in one, 1529 in the other — and agree on what he did with it: he fitted out a tap in the wine cellar already under the house, and built Auerbachs Hof above it between 1530 and 1538. Neither names the document behind the 1438, so the grade rests on two accounts and not on an archive. Goethe drank here as a student between 1765 and 1768 and put the cellar into Faust I, the only real place in the play. The cellar came down in 1912 when Anton Mädler built his arcade over the site, was rebuilt with the old substance and reopened as a licensed house on 22 February 1913. Whether a drink is served without a meal is answered by the operator: the Mephisto bar publishes its own hours, to midnight on Friday and Saturday with last orders half an hour before, while the great cellar takes bookings for dinner. An older Leipzig account was read on 18 September 2026, digitised by the Bavarian State Library: the small chronicle of Auerbachs Keller compiled from old chronicles and documents by P. H. Sillig and published in 1854 by H. Schulze, who was the cellar's landlord when it came out — which has to be weighed, because the book is in part the house advertising itself. Its list of owners runs from 1438 to 1854 and opens with Dr Nicolaus Schulthes, a city juror; so the 1438 that two modern accounts give as a wine tap appears here as the first recorded owner of the ground, which is not the same thing, and the document behind it is still unread. On the cellar Sillig is careful: what suggests it was there before the Hof was built above it, he says, is that the old pictures in it carry the year 1525; and on the succession of landlords he says plainly that the records are very poor. The earliest name he has is a legend — a landlord called Arno, about 1578, whose treatment of his guests had ruined the trade until a painter put the Faust ride on his wall — and beyond that he records a gap in the names until 1717, when the Leipzig address book of that year has Gottfried Kahldorf keeping the cellar. After him come Johann Jakob Key from 1732 to 1750, Dominico di Pietro Mainone in 1799, Joseph Sala taking the business in 1816, Otto Pierer in 1831, and then Schulze, who reopened the rebuilt rooms on 12 September 1850. On the Hof above, Sillig settles the ten-year disagreement recorded here: Stromer bought the front house in 1519 from the heirs of the councillor Hanns Hommelshain, married his daughter Anna in 1522, bought further houses so that he could open a passage through, and built between 1530 and 1538 on the Leipzig Chronicon's dating. The inscription under his portrait calls him the first founder of the Auerbach houses and gives his death on 25 November 1542, in his sixty-fourth year. Gustav Wustmann's two volumes of sources from the city archive and library, of 1889 and 1895, were searched the same night for the 1438 and for the cellar's drinking trade and have neither, though they name Auerbachs Hof repeatedly and record Stromer entering the city council in 1520 — so that is a search and not a guess. One smaller thing: the Leipzig city museum's catalogue holds a postcard of the barrel ride whose printed caption dates the Bretschneider wall painting to 1636, where this note has the panels at about 1625. That is a postcard publisher's wording inside a museum record rather than the museum's own dating, and either year is long after the ride it shows.", "sources": "https://www.auerbachs-keller-leipzig.de/en/history/ | https://www.auerbachs-keller-leipzig.de/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auerbachs_Keller | https://www.leipzig-lexikon.de/HAUSHOF/auerkell.htm | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/264717639 | https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10119972?page=19 | https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10119972?page=28 | https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11610438 | https://www.stadtmuseum.leipzig.de/DE-MUS-853418/objekt=S0015281", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/auerbachs-keller-leipzig/" }, { "slug": "augustiner-brau-kloster-mulln-salzburg", "name": "Augustiner Bräu Kloster Mülln", "city": "Salzburg", "country": "Austria", "nation": "", "type": "bierhalle", "claimed_founded": 1621, "earliest_documented": 1621, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "The former Augustinian friary buildings at Mülln are under monument protection as an ensemble", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Augustinian hermits from Munich took over the house at Mülln in 1605 and founded the brewery in 1621, selling their beer first at the friary gate and later through inns bought for the purpose — so drink was sold on these premises from the start. The Augustinians died out in Salzburg in 1818, the buildings served as barracks, and in 1835 the Emperor Ferdinand I passed them to the Benedictines of Michaelbeuern, who hold half the brewing company still. The trade has not been unbroken: the serving of beer was forbidden in 1940 and the business had to stop altogether in 1944, resuming after the war. The present brewhouse dates from 1912, and the whole friary ensemble is a protected monument.", "sources": "https://www.augustinerbier.at/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustiner_Br%C3%A4u_Kloster_M%C3%BClln | https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=gbh&datum=18890401&seite=24 | https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=slk&datum=1885&page=54", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/augustiner-brau-kloster-mulln-salzburg/" }, { "slug": "bar-britanico-buenos-aires", "name": "Bar Británico", "city": "Buenos Aires", "country": "Argentina", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1928, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1928 is the city of Buenos Aires's: its guide to the notable bars says the Británico opened its doors in 1928, on the ground floor of a five-storey building, and that the corner had earlier been the pulpería La Cosechera. Trading has been interrupted: evicted June 2006, reopened February 2007, closed August 2014 and reopened November 2014. Status after that was not re-verified.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Brit%C3%A1nico | https://turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/es/gastronomico/bar-brit%C3%A1nico", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bar-britanico-buenos-aires/" }, { "slug": "bar-cinzano-valparaiso", "name": "Bar Cinzano", "city": "Valparaíso", "country": "Chile", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1896, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the building in Chile's heritage registers. The Ministry of Housing and Urbanism's compilation of what the communal plans protect, read on 18 September 2026, gives the commune of Valparaíso 999 buildings of historic conservation and 29 conservation zones and holds nothing at the Plaza Aníbal Pinto and nothing at number 1182; the nearest entries are a few doors off the square, on Esmeralda at 1103-1111, 1131-1141, 1132 and 1146 and on Condell at 1227-1231, 1234, 1240 and 1260-1288, which is the control that this compilation does list ordinary commercial houses by street and number. Chile's Council of National Monuments, which keeps the registers of historic monuments and of the typical zones, would not answer at all on three attempts", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1896 dates a pulpería — a grocery that served drink only occasionally — and the sources record the house settling into a bar and restaurant over the years that followed without naming a year. Drink-led trade here cannot be dated to the year claimed, so it keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Spanish Wikipedia, following La Tercera's account of October 2020, records that the Italian immigrant Pipo Lima opened a business on the Plaza Aníbal Pinto in 1896 that worked as a pulpería and, now and then, as a bar; over the years it settled into being a bar and restaurant, and the Lima family held it until 1932. Pablo Varas bought it in 1978 and put a tango room upstairs, then moved the tango down and made the upper floor a dance floor. Carmen Corena began singing here in 1986 and the house recorded two albums of its own. It closed in October 2020 during the pandemic and reopened in September 2022, which Emol reported; its own site was selling tickets for live music in September 2026. No document has been read behind 1896, so the grade is C. A register was read for it on 18 September 2026 and it has no entry. Chile's Ministry of Housing and Urbanism compiles what every communal plan protects, and for the commune of Valparaíso the compilation runs to 999 buildings of historic conservation and 29 conservation zones. Neither the Plaza Aníbal Pinto nor the number 1182 appears anywhere in it. That is a gap rather than a blind spot, because the compilation lists plain commercial houses by street and number a few doors from the square: on Esmeralda at 1103-1111, 1131-1141, 1132 and 1146, and on Condell at 1227-1231, 1234, 1240 and 1260-1288. The Council of National Monuments, which keeps Chile's registers of historic monuments and of the typical zones and would be the other place to look, refused every connection on three attempts that night and two the night before, so the bar still has no reading from the national body. The compilation is the Ministry's transcription of what the communal plans say rather than a declaration of its own, and it says so on the page.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Cinzano | https://www.latercera.com/culto/2020/10/21/fin-a-una-bohemia-un-recorrido-por-el-mitico-bar-cinzano-de-valparaiso/ | https://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2022/09/13/1072788/bar-cinzano-reabre-sus-puertas.html | https://cinzanooficial.cl/ | https://www.patrimoniourbano.cl/inmuebles-y-zonas-patrimoniales/region-de-valparaiso/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bar-cinzano-valparaiso/" }, { "slug": "bar-cordano-lima", "name": "Bar Cordano", "city": "Lima", "country": "Peru", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1905, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación (1989)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1905 is the Lima press's: Infobae's survey of the city's historic bars dates the Cordano from 1905, and Spanish Wikipedia has the house founded on 13 January 1905 by the Genoese Vigilio Botano with the brothers Luis and Antonio Cordano, first as a bazaar and only later as a salón-restaurante. The 1905 record is therefore a shop, and none of the sources consulted dates the change to a bar. The staff have owned the business since 1978 and Peru declared the premises part of the nation's cultural heritage in 1989. The trading was checked on 18 September 2026: the Lima daily Trome reported on 13 January 2026 that the Cordano had reached 121 years in full trade, on the corner of Áncash and Carabaya beside the Government Palace, and the city of Lima's own visitor service publishes its hours as eight in the morning until half past eight at night, every day of the week.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Cordano | https://www.infobae.com/peru/2025/01/16/los-bares-historicos-de-lima-un-recorrido-por-los-clasicos-que-siguen-vivos-en-el-centro-historico/ | https://trome.com/actualidad/historico-bar-cordano-del-centro-de-lima-celebra-121-anos-de-fundacion-noticia/ | https://visitalima.pe/atractivos/bar-cordano/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bar-cordano-lima/" }, { "slug": "bar-el-federal-buenos-aires", "name": "Bar El Federal", "city": "Buenos Aires", "country": "Argentina", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1864, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Sitio de Interés Cultural, Buenos Aires (2004)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1864 is the Buenos Aires press's, not the bar's, which publishes nothing a reader can open. La Nación writes that El Federal was born as a pulpería in 1864 on two dirt streets at the corner of Perú and Carlos Calvo, and Perfil, marking 160 years in 2024, has it opening that year and passing from pulpería to almacén de ramos generales before settling into the bar it is now. A pulpería sold drink across a counter, which is why the year is treated as a drinking-house date rather than a shop's. The city's own guide to its bares notables, which gives years for other houses, says only that El Federal is of the 19th century. The corner building it later moved into is late 19th-century Italianate and its interior early 20th. The doors were checked on 18 September 2026 and the answer is a day old: La Nación, writing on the 17th, lists El Federal among the houses opening late for the fifth Noche de los Bares Notables on 24 September 2026, the city's own circuit of its protected bars, and the Buenos Aires tourism service publishes the corner as a working bar.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_El_Federal | https://turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/es/gastronomico/bar-el-federal | https://www.lanacion.com.ar/buenos-aires/el-federal-el-bar-que-en-1864-instalo-el-ritual-de-la-picada-y-el-vermut-nid1739438/ | https://www.perfil.com/noticias/sociedad/el-historico-bar-el-federal-celebra-los-160-anos-de-su-fundacion.phtml | https://www.lanacion.com.ar/que-sale/la-noche-de-los-bares-notables-2026-cuales-son-los-mas-de-75-locales-que-abren-hasta-la-medianoche-nid17092026/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bar-el-federal-buenos-aires/" }, { "slug": "bar-la-opera-mexico-city", "name": "Bar La Ópera", "city": "Mexico City", "country": "Mexico", "nation": "", "type": "cantina", "claimed_founded": 1876, "earliest_documented": 1895, "gap_years": 19, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old business, younger bar: the 1876 dates a French pastry shop, and drink-led trade here begins with the move to 5 de Mayo in 1895.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Three accounts agree on the sequence and not one of them points at a document. The house says it opened in 1876 as a French pastry shop at another address and moved to 5 de Mayo in 1895 as a cantina. Mexico City's own visitor service says the same: an exclusive pastry shop run by the French Boulangeot sisters, which gave up desserts on moving in 1895 to become the most sumptuous bar in the capital. Excélsior adds the two corners — San Juan de Letrán and Avenida Juárez first, where the Torre Latinoamericana now stands, then 5 de Mayo and Filomeno Mata — and says openly that it is working from what has been handed down rather than from archives. So the year the house is known by dates a confectioner's counter and not a drinking house, which is why the grade is C and why the house sits outside the ranking of pubs that have poured continuously: the drink begins in 1895, on the same untested account. The bullet hole in the ceiling attributed to Pancho Villa in 1914 is told the same way, and Excélsior notes that historians have questioned it.", "sources": "https://barlaopera.com/ | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bar-la-opera | https://mexicocity.cdmx.gob.mx/venues/la-opera/?lang=en | https://www.excelsior.com.mx/trending/historia-de-la-opera-la-cantina-de-cdmx-marcada-por-pancho-villa/1715478", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bar-la-opera-mexico-city/" }, { "slug": "bell-in-hand-tavern-boston", "name": "Bell in Hand Tavern", "city": "Boston", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1795, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1795 is the tavern's own, printed at the head of its website as 'America's Oldest Tavern: First Pour 1795' and cited here from a 2019 copy because the live site refuses readers it does not recognise. Wikipedia notes the foundation by town crier Jimmy Wilson rests on tradition. The business has moved several times to reach 45 Union Street and it stopped trading during Prohibition, so 'oldest continuously operating bar' is not accurate.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_in_Hand_Tavern | https://historyofmassachusetts.org/bell-in-hand-tavern-history/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20190923105958/https://www.bellinhand.com/history.html | https://data.boston.gov/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=4582bec6-2b4f-4f9e-bc55-cbaa73117f4c&q=Bell%20In%20Hand", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bell-in-hand-tavern-boston/" }, { "slug": "black-boy-inn-caernarfon", "name": "Black Boy Inn", "city": "Caernarfon", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1522, "earliest_documented": 1717, "gap_years": 195, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 3905), designated 31 March 1983", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw's listing, number 3905, describes a seventeenth-century house built in several phases, all probably of that century, with the windows altered in the nineteenth and replaced with leaded lights about 1900, and lists it as a rare surviving seventeenth-century building inside the walled town. Nothing in it reaches 1522, so the inn's claim runs about a century ahead of its fabric; the earliest record cited for the name is a 1717 deed to 'Street y Black Boy'. CAMRA gives the interior one star on its national inventory — special national historic interest — for two bars barely altered since the renovation of 1954, when the middle room, then a shop, became the lounge it still is. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales holds the house in the national record of buildings as number 26029, an inn of the post-medieval period on Northgate Street, and that record is worth reading for what it is and is not. Its description is the listing's own text, and it names the register as its source, dated June 2007, so it is Cadw restated rather than a second opinion on the date. What it adds is a citation: the Commission's own inventory of the ancient monuments in Caernarvonshire, volume two, published in 1960, describes the building at pages 156 and following with a drawing. The house was therefore surveyed and published by the Commission more than twenty years before it was listed in 1983, and we have not read that volume. The register's description repays quoting for the drinker rather than the dater: the main doorway leads into an original through passage with a round-headed niche on the right and a seventeenth-century round-headed doorway beyond it, the lower storey has cross-beams with run-out stops, a right-hand room has a fireplace with a timber lintel, and collar-beam roof trusses survive over the main range and the rear wings. Still nothing that reaches 1522.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Boy_Inn | https://www.black-boy-inn.com/ | https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/north-waless-oldest-pubsand-ghosts-14818052 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=3905 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/black-boy-inn-caernarfon-146145 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/200826 | https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/26029/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/black-boy-inn-caernarfon/" }, { "slug": "black-bull-inn-moffat", "name": "Black Bull Inn", "city": "Moffat", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1568, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (LB37883)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A fifteen-room inn with a bistro and a cask-ale bar open to anyone; shut for part of the winter.", "evidence_notes": "The 1568 date is the inn's own, and CAMRA's Dumfries and Stewartry branch repeats it, calling the building the oldest in Moffat still in use. Historic Environment Scotland takes a different view: its category B record dates the standing building to probably the 18th century, on the site of an earlier inn, and writes the 1568 date down as a claim rather than a finding. Claverhouse's lodging here in 1678 is also given as tradition. No 16th-century document or fabric has been traced.", "sources": "https://www.theblackbullmoffat.co.uk/history/ | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB37883 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/black-bull-inn-moffat-148368 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1206446 | https://www.theblackbullmoffat.co.uk/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/black-bull-inn-moffat/" }, { "slug": "bratwurst-roslein-nuremberg", "name": "Bratwurst Röslein", "city": "Nuremberg", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1493, "earliest_documented": 1815, "gap_years": 322, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "No individual entry in the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments' list for the city of Nuremberg; the house stands inside the Altstadt Nürnberg ensemble, E-5-64-000-1, an area designation that describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A Franconian sausage house with a beer garden on the Rathausplatz and beer priced by the half-litre.", "evidence_notes": "Two dates hang over this house and both are its own. The front page says since 1493, and the chronology behind it dates nothing to that year at all. That chronology opens with old house deeds naming a beer-tap house called the Waizenstüblein in 1431, later taken into the Röslein and still the name of its oldest room, and with the first mention of the Nuremberg sausage kitchen Zu den drei Rosen about 1480. The birthdays the house has kept count from 1431 — a 570th in 2001, a 575th in 2006 — and the English Wikipedia gives 1431 as the founding year. Against that, a Nuremberg local-history site citing Konrad Nopitsch has the sausage kitchen arising as a plain beer house called Zu den drei goldenen Röslein at some point before 1801, and notes that Friedrich Mayer's guide to the city of about 1850 lists it among neither the beer houses nor the sausage kitchens at a time when the Bratwurstglöcklein was famous. The same account has Paul Zettel advertising a Bratwurstküche zu den drei goldenen Röslein in 1904, with the largest sausage production in the city behind it, and the name Bratwurst Röslein settling only after the First World War; the house's own chronology gives 1815 for the first official mention as the Röslein and 1906 for the first as Bratwurst Röslein. So the grade is C: nothing traced reaches the fifteenth century except through the house's account of deeds nobody else has read. The building is young. Bombing destroyed the timber-framed house on 2 January 1945, the Köhnleins carried the trade on in a temporary place after the war, the present building went up between 1965 and 1967, and the butchery next door was taken into the dining room in the 1990s. Drink without a meal is answered by the operator, whose beer-garden page on the Rathausplatz offers cold drinks before it offers food, by the city's tourist office describing the beer garden in the courtyard, and by a card that prices beer by the half-litre, wheat beer and pilsner among them. The register has now been read rather than left unsearched. The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments publishes its own list for each municipality, and the list for the city of Nuremberg as it stood on 16 September 2026 carries no monument at Rathausplatz 6. What it does list on that square is the town hall, D-5-64-000-1589, entered under Rathausplatz 2 with Fünferplatz 1 and 7 and Theresienstraße 2, and the fountains between the square and the Hauptmarkt: the Schöner Brunnen, D-5-64-000-730, the Gänsemännchen, D-5-64-000-1590, and the Fleischhauerbrunnen, D-5-64-000-726. The house stands inside the Altstadt Nürnberg ensemble, E-5-64-000-1, which takes in the city within its fortifications; an ensemble is drawn round an area, dates no building and judges no single house in it, so it is not a listing of this one. The absence fits the dates, since the timber-framed predecessor burned on 2 January 1945 and what stands now went up between 1965 and 1967. The ensemble entry earns one more line, because it explains why a post-war house sits inside a protected old town at all: the city was rebuilt from 1950 to Heinz Schmeißner and Wilhelm Schlegtendal's plan, which followed the old street lines and the old plot pattern instead of replacing them, and the State Office counts that reconstruction as part of what the ensemble protects.", "sources": "https://www.bratwurst-roeslein.de/historie | https://www.bratwurst-roeslein.de/ | https://nuernberginfos.de/gaststaetten-hotels-nuernberg/bratwurst-roeslein.php | https://tourismus.nuernberg.de/en/food-drink/restaurants/location/bratwurst-roeslein/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratwurst-R%C3%B6slein | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1806697531 | https://geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_564000.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bratwurst-roslein-nuremberg/" }, { "slug": "brauerei-spezial-bamberg", "name": "Brauerei Spezial", "city": "Bamberg", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1536, "earliest_documented": 1631, "gap_years": 95, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Baudenkmal D-4-61-000-1065 (Bavarian list of monuments)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A brewery inn with a guest house; the panelled Wirtsstube pours from nine, hours before the kitchen opens.", "evidence_notes": "The house dates itself from a document of 1536 that names the cooper Linhard Großkopf as the founder of the brewing house, and the German Wikipedia article says the same; the name Spezial arrives later, with Nikolas Delscher, called Spicial, who was a brewer and a cooper too. What 1536 dates is brewing, not a counter, so on its own it is no evidence of a drinking house in that year. The earliest account traced of drink actually being served here is in the same house history: Delscher held the brewery tavern from 1631 until his death in 1664. The fabric is what carries the claim. The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, in its own published list for the city of Bamberg, enters Obere Königstraße 10 under D-4-61-000-1065 as Brauereigasthaus Spezial and dates the broad two-storey eaves-fronted house, with its decorated half-timbered upper storey and steep roof, to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, while the brewery puts the core of the front range at about 1450 and reads 1742 on the brewhouse behind. So the building is of the claimed age and the serving is first recorded a century later, which is grade B. Anyone may drink here without eating: the rooms open at nine in the morning, the kitchen not until half past eleven, and the house says it keeps places for people who walk in.", "sources": "https://brauerei-spezial.de/geschichte/ | https://brauerei-spezial.de/gasthof/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brauerei_Spezial | https://www.bamberg.info/poi/brauerei_spezial-5202/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Baudenkm%C3%A4ler_in_Bamberg/Untere_G%C3%A4rtnerei | https://geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_461000.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/brauerei-spezial-bamberg/" }, { "slug": "buckhorn-exchange-denver", "name": "Buckhorn Exchange", "city": "Denver", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1893, "earliest_documented": 1933, "gap_years": 40, "building_year": 1893, "building_year_source": "https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/83001292_text", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 21 April 1983 (ref. 83001292); a City of Denver landmark", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A game and steak restaurant; the upstairs saloon is a bar in its own right, with the 1857 oak counter and licence number one on the wall.", "evidence_notes": "Henry H. Zietz, a plainsman who had ridden with Buffalo Bill's scouts and was nicknamed Shorty Scout by Sitting Bull, opened a saloon at 1000 Osage Street in 1893 across from the Rio Grande railway yards, where he took railwaymen's pay cheques on a Friday and handed back a token for a lunch and a beer. That account, and the specific date 1893, are in the nomination the National Park Service accepted in April 1983 (ref. 83001292), which calls the house one of Denver's oldest restaurant bars and says the business has continued in its original use apart from Prohibition. The nomination's own earliest source for the 1893 is a Rocky Mountain News series of July 1936, and the earliest contemporary paper it lists is a Denver telephone and business directory of 1905, so no document of the 1890s has been read from here — the Colorado Historic Newspapers collection and the Colorado Encyclopedia both refuse an automated request. Denver Public Library's special collections tell it differently, and earlier: their file for the building has it put up in late 1885 or early 1886 for John M. Berkey, sold to the Neef Brothers Brewery and Investment Company in 1889, and trading as a saloon called the Rio Grande Exchange from November 1892 under Zietz, with the Buckhorn name arriving in the early 1900s and Zietz only buying the building in 1932. Nothing has been found to decide between the two accounts, and the difference matters: on the library's reading the drink here is a few months older than the claim and the sign a decade younger. The dated drink record that is not in dispute is later and is on the wall: Colorado liquor licence number one, issued in 1933 when Prohibition ended and the family reopened the grocery they had made of the saloon as a restaurant and bar. The white oak bar was made in Essen in 1857 and stood inside the front door until 1978, when new owners closed the upstairs lodging rooms and moved it up to make a second drinking room.", "sources": "https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/83001292_text | https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-buckhorn-exchange-in-denver-colorado | https://visitdenver.com/blog/post/first-colorado-liquor-license/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckhorn_Exchange | https://www.buckhorn.com/history/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/519549594 | https://history.denverlibrary.org/building/buckhorn-exchange", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/buckhorn-exchange-denver/" }, { "slug": "bushranger-hotel-collector", "name": "Bushranger Hotel", "city": "Collector", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1860, "earliest_documented": 1865, "gap_years": 5, "building_year": 1860, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NSW State Heritage Register (SHR 01827, Ben Hall Sites)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The construction years are the New South Wales State Heritage Register's: 1860-1861, for Kimberley's Commercial Hotel, built by a bootmaker who folded his shop into the hotel. Its hotel use is firmly documented by Ben Hall's gang raid on 26 January 1865, when Constable Samuel Nelson was shot dead outside. The register and Wikipedia say it has operated as a hotel ever since. That sentence describes the record up to the register reading of 18 September 2026, which says something else about now: New South Wales publishes its licensed premises monthly, and the list standing at 1 August 2026 carries the licence as current while marking the premises itself as having temporarily ceased trading, a state recorded against it since June 2024. So the house is left as trading here, because a licence is alive and nobody has told us the door is shut for good, but a traveller should ring before driving to Collector.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushranger_Hotel | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5055032 | https://www.nsw.gov.au/business-and-economy/liquor-and-gaming/gaming/gaming-machine-data-reports/licensed-premises-data", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/bushranger-hotel-collector/" }, { "slug": "cafe-t-papeneiland-amsterdam", "name": "Café 't Papeneiland", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1642, "earliest_documented": 1896, "gap_years": 254, "building_year": 1641, "building_year_source": "Rijksmonument 718, which dates the corner house with its stepped gables to 1641; the cafe dates itself 1642", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 718, entered in the national register on 8 September 1970", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1896", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Dutch national monuments register describes Prinsengracht 2 as a corner house with stepped gables to the street and the side, decorated with heavy arched blocks, and dates it 1641 — a year off the 1642 the cafe gives, and near enough to hold the claim up. Vereniging Hendrick de Keyser, which has owned the house since 1918 and is the second publisher this row needed, gives the same year: built in 1641 as a shop with a dwelling above, its matching stepped gables to two sides a rare thing on the canals, with an eighteenth-century pottery shop trading here and the cafe De Blauwe Druif arriving at the end of the nineteenth century. Both accounts make the original use trade and living rather than drinking. The cafe's own history has it selling beer and wine as a shop for many years before it was first fully licensed in 1896, as De Blauwe Druif, taking its present name in 1956. The story that an undertaker sold drink here from about 1600 cannot stand: the corner plot was still empty until 1641. The name remembers the clandestine Catholic church De Posthoorn, which stood in this block until 1860. So the walls are of the claimed age and the counter trade is recorded two and a half centuries later.", "sources": "https://www.papeneiland.nl/History.html | https://www.papeneiland.nl/Geschiedenis.html | https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/718 | https://www.hendrickdekeyser.nl/de-huizen/prinsengracht-2 | https://api.data.amsterdam.nl/v1/horeca/exploitatievergunning/?adres%5Blike%5D=Prinsengracht%202*&_format=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-t-papeneiland-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "cafe-chris-amsterdam", "name": "Café Chris", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1624, "earliest_documented": 1882, "gap_years": 258, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1882", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1624 is the café's own claim, and Amsterdam750 records it as such before testing it: Café Chris says it dates from 1624 and poured beer for the men building the Westertoren. Amsterdam750 found no evidence of a drinking house at this address before the 19th century, with café use documented from 1882.", "sources": "https://amsterdam750.nl/verhaal/wat-is-de-oudste-kroeg-van-amsterdam/ | https://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/170-amsterdam-oldest-cafe | https://api.data.amsterdam.nl/v1/horeca/exploitatievergunning/?adres%5Blike%5D=Bloemstraat%2042*&_format=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-chris-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "cafe-de-druif-amsterdam", "name": "Café De Druif", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1585, "earliest_documented": 1863, "gap_years": 278, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1863", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1585 dates a distillery, not a café, and comes from the local press: Oost Online reports that the De Druif liqueur distillery dates from 1585 and that a café is said to have been in the building from 1631, while rejecting the story that the admiral Piet Hein drank here — he was dead by then. Amsterdam750 goes further and finds that De Druif began as a drinking house only in 1863.", "sources": "https://amsterdam750.nl/verhaal/wat-is-de-oudste-kroeg-van-amsterdam/ | https://oost-online.nl/stamgasten-willen-cafe-de-druif-door-de-crisis-helpen/ | https://api.data.amsterdam.nl/v1/horeca/exploitatievergunning/?adres%5Blike%5D=Rapenburgerplein%2083*&_format=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-de-druif-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "cafe-de-karpershoek-amsterdam", "name": "Café De Karpershoek", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1606, "earliest_documented": 1641, "gap_years": 35, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1606 is the Amsterdam press's: Mokum Magazine states flatly that the brown café dates from 1606. Amsterdam750's review of the archives is more careful — an inn named De Oldenburger Kelder is recorded on this spot in 1641, with one indication from 1606 that drink was already sold here — so the earlier year is possible but unproven.", "sources": "https://amsterdam750.nl/verhaal/wat-is-de-oudste-kroeg-van-amsterdam/ | https://www.mokummagazine.nl/2024/07/12/cafe-karpershoek-de-oude-dame-is-in-stijl-opgepimpt/ | https://api.data.amsterdam.nl/v1/horeca/exploitatievergunning/?adres%5Blike%5D=Martelaarsgracht%202*&_format=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-de-karpershoek-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "cafe-de-la-table-ronde-grenoble", "name": "Café de la Table Ronde", "city": "Grenoble", "country": "France", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1739, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "French Wikipedia, following a local newspaper account of January 2023, records that the master confectioner Caudet bought the clockmaker François Dagonneau's shop on the place Saint-André and opened a café in it in 1739, when Grenoble held twenty thousand people; it was the café Caudet, took the name Flandrin in 1758 and Table Ronde in 1797. The composer Antoine Renard is said to have written the music of Le Temps des cerises here. In the war the back room was a meeting place for the resistance, and the German authorities shut the café on 4 February 1944 and arrested the owner, Marie Pollini, with a number of the regulars. The Boccard family have held it since 1972. No deed or licence has been read behind 1739, so the grade is C. It trades as a café and brasserie from nine in the morning to midnight.", "sources": "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_La_Table_ronde | https://www.restaurant-tableronde-grenoble.com/ | https://actu.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/grenoble_38185/ce-cafe-ouvert-en-1739-est-le-plus-vieux-de-grenoble-voici-ses-secrets_56466528.html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-de-la-table-ronde-grenoble/" }, { "slug": "cafe-hoppe-amsterdam", "name": "Café Hoppe", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1670, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 5556 (Spui 18) and Rijksmonument 5557 (Spui 20)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Hoppe states it has been on the Spui since 1670, originally as a distiller's tasting room, but no primary record for that date was found in the sources checked. The standing bar at no. 18 is the old part; the seated room next door came into the café in the early twentieth century, and that is a fact about the business rather than about the building, which this page had confused. The Dutch national monuments register, read on 17 September 2026 through the Cultural Heritage Agency's linked-data endpoint, lists both houses. Spui 18 is Rijksmonument 5556, a corner house of the seventeenth century whose front was given a straight cornice in the earlier nineteenth. Spui 20 is Rijksmonument 5557, a house with a bell gable of the third quarter of the eighteenth century. So the room Hoppe took over was already about a hundred and fifty years old when it took it, and the seventeenth-century date the café gives for its own corner is at least consistent with the register's date for the building it stands in — which is as far as the register can take a claim about when drink was first poured there.", "sources": "https://cafehoppe.com/en/about/ | https://cafehoppe.com/en | https://www.entreemagazine.nl/ondernemen/hope-cafe-hoppe-amsterdam | https://api.linkeddata.cultureelerfgoed.nl/datasets/rce/cho/services/cho/sparql", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-hoppe-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "cafe-in-de-blaauwe-hand-nijmegen", "name": "Café In de Blaauwe Hand", "city": "Nijmegen", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1542, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1320, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 31115, Achter de Hoofdwacht 3, entered in the national register on 17 April 1973 (cadastral parcel Nijmegen C 2604); the register records the original function as a dwelling house", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The café occupies the right-hand corner of Nijmegen's cloth hall, which is first named in the city accounts of 1382 and was rebuilt between 1542 and 1545 to a design by Claes die Waele of Rhenen — the same 1542 the café gives as its founding date. The Digitale Huis pages of Regionaal Archief Nijmegen list the hall's later mixed uses, including the municipal bottelarij, say the cloth guild kept beer and wine in this cellar for its feasts, and treat the dyers drinking here as tradition. Erfgoed Gelderland asserts a hospitality function from 1542 and a feast attended by Charles V in 1546, but no licence or named tapster has been published; the earliest firm evidence for the house's name is the gable stone of 1797.", "sources": "https://mijngelderland.nl/inhoud/verhalen/caf%C3%A9-restaurant-in-de-blaauwe-hand | https://indeblaauwehand.nl/in-de-blaauwe-hand/ | https://www.huisvandenijmeegsegeschiedenis.nl/info/Gewandhuis_of_Lakenhal | https://rijksmonumenten.nl/monument/31115/de-blaauwe-hand/nijmegen/ | https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/31115", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-in-de-blaauwe-hand-nijmegen/" }, { "slug": "cafe-vlissinghe-bruges", "name": "Café Vlissinghe", "city": "Bruges", "country": "Belgium", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1515, "earliest_documented": 1515, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument since 9 June 1998 (Flanders heritage inventory 83240, listed as Herberg Vlissinghe)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Owners of the two houses are named in Bruges archives from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, and in 1515 the owner is described for the first time as a tavernier — an innkeeper. That entry, in the city's register of the sixteenths, is the record behind the 1515 the café claims, and the Flemish heritage agency's inventory carries it in its own words: the history of this inn goes back to the first half of the sixteenth century, and the oldest mention reaches 1515 according to the register of the sixteenths. The same entry classes the building's type as an inn and dates the fabric to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — two joined houses of two storeys under separate saddle roofs, a blind three-bay front of the seventeenth century on the left against a sixteenth-century front to the right, with traces of older openings in the brickwork. The name Vlissinghe appears in documents from 1579, an inventory of about the same date lists tables and benches, and in 1648 the property is called plainly a house and inn. Dutch Wikipedia and the café itself call it the oldest surviving café in Bruges. The room a drinker sits in owes much to Leon De Meulemeester, whose family bought the house in 1855 and who fitted it out from 1869 with neo-baroque furniture, bought-in old paintings and a genuine seventeenth-century black marble chimneypiece; the garden pavilion was fitted out to the taste of the Kunstgenegen, an artists' circle founded in 1894, and still carries their mottoes on its panelling.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_Vlissinghe | https://www.cafevlissinghe.be/ | https://erfgoedbrugge.be/verken-per-collectie/cafe-vlissinghe | https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/83240 | https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlissinghe", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cafe-vlissinghe-bruges/" }, { "slug": "caffe-cordina-valletta", "name": "Caffe Cordina", "city": "Valletta", "country": "Malta", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1837, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "The English Wikipedia article on the Casa del Commun Tesoro, of which these rooms are part, says the building is scheduled a Grade 1 national monument. We have not read Malta's own register: the planning authority's scheduled-property pages and the culture ministry's heritage site have refused every attempt on four separate nights and the national inventory's domain no longer resolves, so neither the grade nor the date of the scheduling is confirmed here", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1837 belongs to a grocery the Cordina family kept in Cospicua, not to a drinking house at this address. Cesare Cordina bought these rooms from the Casino Maltese in 1944, which is when coffee began to be served here, so the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A café and confectioner on Republic Square; coffee is served across the counter without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "Cordina's own line is that it has been serving since 1837, and its own history explains what the year belongs to: John Cordina's great-great-grandparents, who came from San Gimignano, set up shop that year in Cospicua, across the Grand Harbour from Valletta, and sold goods from their homeland with a horse and cart. A bomb closed that shop in the Second World War, and Cesare Cordina took these rooms from the Casino Maltese in 1944. So the date belongs to a family grocery in another town, and coffee has been served at this address for a little over eighty years — the hot counter and the island's first Gaggia machine both arrived under Cesare in the early 1950s. The rooms are part of the Casa del Commun Tesoro, built for the treasury of the Order of St John, later the island's first post office and a hotel. The house sells coffee across a counter to anyone who walks in, which answers the question of whether a drink is served without a meal. Two Maltese publishers were read on 18 September 2026 and they sharpen the year and correct a word of it. The business news site BusinessNow, in December 2021, has John Cordina — Cesare's son, born on 22 September 1944 — putting the opening of the caffè at 11 November 1944, and saying that his father rented the Valletta building, then owned by the Casino Maltese, rather than buying it. This page had it as a purchase; the tenancy is what the family says. The same interview has Cesare and his brother Ottone keeping the Cospicua confectionery that the bomb destroyed, close to the dockyard; the caffè at first taking only the middle of the building, where the bar is, with Cesare's wife in the pantry and one employee, Frans Cutajar, who came at fifteen and stayed until he was sixty; the Giuseppe Calì ceiling paintings going up in the year John was born, in frames his father remade from the wood of egg boxes after the wartime removal chipped the originals; and Cesare afterwards taking in the British Pharmacy next door and a tobacconist on Old Theatre Street. The food magazine Served, in January 2023, has the third generation, Luca Cordina, giving the same 1837 in Bormla and the same move in 1944, and describing what the house is now: a confectionery kitchen underground, seats out in Pjazza Regina, an ice-cream counter opening on to Republic Street, and a deliberate push to be read as a restaurant as well as a caffè. Malta's own registers refused for a fourth night, so the Grade 1 scheduling of the Casa del Commun Tesoro is still something this page has from an encyclopaedia article and not from the register.", "sources": "https://caffecordina.com/history-of-caffe-cordina/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_del_Commun_Tesoro | https://caffecordina.com/the-caffe/ | https://businessnow.mt/the-story-behind-one-of-the-oldest-cafes-in-europe-maltas-caffe-cordina/ | https://served.mt/caffe-cordina/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/caffe-cordina-valletta/" }, { "slug": "caledonian-inn-port-fairy", "name": "Caledonian Inn", "city": "Port Fairy", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1844, "earliest_documented": 1844, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Victorian Heritage Register H0247", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A country pub with a bistro; the bar opens at eleven and runs to one in the morning, long after the kitchen shuts", "evidence_notes": "The Victorian Heritage Register's report for the house records that the Scottish-born David McLaws entered into a lease for the block at the corner of Bank and James Streets in 1844 and is first recorded as the licensee of the Caledonian Hotel in the same year. The size of the house he held then is not known, and it was built in stages: the interior of the whole attic storey on the James Street elevation remains unfinished because the workmen reputedly abandoned the site for the goldfields. McLaws bought the acre from James Atkinson in 1850 for £200, held the licence for most of the period from 1844 to about 1860, and the hotel stayed in his estate until 1887. It became a venue for horse sales, among them those of Thomas Browne, who wrote as Rolf Boldrewood and lived in the district from 1843 to 1856, and the Western Horse Bazaar opened here in November 1872. Port Fairy calls it the oldest continuously licensed hotel in Victoria, and Portland's Gordon Hotel makes a rival claim from 1842; the house closed until further notice in September 2023 and reopened on 27 December 2023, so the word continuously needs that qualification. It trades as The Stump.", "sources": "https://www.thestumpportfairy.com.au/ | https://www.standard.net.au/story/8347759/popular-watering-holes-closure-stumps-pub-regulars/ | https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/state-histories.html | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/2607/download-report | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/69315", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/caledonian-inn-port-fairy/" }, { "slug": "cantina-do-mori-venice", "name": "Cantina Do Mori", "city": "Venice", "country": "Italy", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1462, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Founded as a wine cellar supplying nearby convents; counter trade in wine and cicchetti is documented only from the twentieth century, so drink-led use cannot be traced to the 1462 the press gives it.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1462 date is one the Italian food press uses rather than one we can show the bacaro making: Caterina Vianello gave it in her review for Dissapore in October 2019, under a headline that hedges — the oldest bacaro, so it seems — and Paesi del Gusto repeated it in July 2025. We found no document behind it, and no page published by the business itself; the bar has no website we could trace. Both accounts also say the premises began as a wine cellar serving nearby convents and that counter trade in wine and cicchetti came to the fore only in the last century, so unbroken use as a drinking house since 1462 is not established either. The Casanova story is repeated everywhere and evidenced nowhere.", "sources": "https://www.dissapore.com/ristoranti/cantina-do-mori-a-venezia-recensione-il-bacaro-piu-antico-cosi-pare/ | https://www.paesidelgusto.it/fondato-nel-1462-e-il-bacaro-piu-antico-di-venezia-e-non-e-questo-il-suo-unico-record-il-suo-bancone-e-cosi-lungo-che-collega-due-calli/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cantina-do-mori-venice/" }, { "slug": "cardrona-hotel-cardrona", "name": "Cardrona Hotel", "city": "Cardrona", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1863, "earliest_documented": 1876, "gap_years": 13, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New Zealand Heritage List / Rārangi Kōrero 2239, Historic Place Category 2, entered 15 December 2011 — the false front only", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Heritage New Zealand lists the Cardrona Hotel's false front, and only the false front, as a Category 2 historic place entered on 15 December 2011. Its entry says the building dates from the 1860s, when Cardrona was a busy gold-mining community, that it was originally called the Empire Hotel after a nearby claim, and that it was renamed the Cardrona Hotel only in 1926. It was one of four hotels serving the settlement, with accommodation, livery and a coaching stop. James Paterson held the licence from 1926 until he died at 91 in 1961, and the hotel then closed for a period in the 1960s and early 1970s before redevelopment. The entry is plain that the false front now conceals modern premises built behind it, so the house a visitor walks into is not the gold-rush building. Read in full, the entry gives two things more. Its own table of construction dates puts the first hotel building and its false front in the late 1860s, and 1863 — the year the hotel takes for its own — is the year the entry gives for the discovery of gold at Cardrona. And it carries a dated record of the house in trade: land title information names Rebecca Bond, widow of the early proprietor G. Bond who may have built the hotel, as its owner in 1876. She sold in 1884, and Thomas Willoughby, a blacksmith and Sunday school teacher said to have bought the place in order to keep the drinking down, held it from 1885 to 1926. That 1876, published by Heritage New Zealand, is the earliest year any record traced puts this hotel in somebody's hands, and it is thirteen years after the year on the sign.", "sources": "https://www.cardronahotel.co.nz/history | https://www.cardronahotel.co.nz/ | https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018660891/new-zealand-s-finest-historic-pubs | https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/2239/2239", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cardrona-hotel-cardrona/" }, { "slug": "casa-alberto-madrid", "name": "Casa Alberto", "city": "Madrid", "country": "Spain", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1827, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the City of Madrid's catalogue of protected elements, published with the 1997 revision of its General Plan — approved by the full council on 17 December 1996 and definitively by the government of the Community of Madrid on 17 April 1997, the text appearing in that region's gazette on 19 April 1997. The building is entry 04146 in the Calle de las Huertas, catalogued at the level the plan calls Parcial, with particular conditions set out in an individual record we have not read; the premises themselves are entry 04146-01 in the catalogue's separate list of protected commercial establishments, printed as Casa Alberto Restaurante, at Nivel 1, the first of the three levels that list uses. The page carrying this entry prints no door numbers, so it is matched by its name and its street; the name occurs once in the whole catalogue", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A taberna at the front with a dining room behind; the counter pours vermouth and wine for hours longer than the kitchen cooks.", "evidence_notes": "The 1827 is the house's own and the city repeats it. Casa Alberto's history page gives the year and says a plaque at the door, put up by Madrid city council, carries it; the city's own tourism service prints the same date. Neither points at a licence, a deed or a directory entry, and none was traced, so the year is a claim with a municipal plaque behind it rather than a record. The house's own account of a mid-sixteenth-century building on the plot, in which Cervantes lodged, is about a predecessor rather than the standing walls, and we have not traced a date for those. What is documented is the later history, which is the part that made the room: the tavern was run through the nineteenth century by families from northern Segovia, the Sanz, the Pesquera and the de Dios in turn; Alberto de Dios joined the staff in 1915, took the business on in 1924 and remodelled it into what stands now, and it was he who made vermouth the thing the place is known for. Drink without a meal is not in doubt. The house publishes separate hours for its two trades, the taberna from noon to eleven and the restaurant in two sittings inside them, and the counter is an onyx slab with a five-tap font, a seltz saturator and a nineteenth-century till still on it. A register was read for this house on 18 September 2026 and it is the city's own. Madrid's catalogue of protected elements, published with the 1997 revision of the General Plan, has two entries here: the building, 04146 in the Calle de las Huertas, protected at the level the plan calls Parcial with conditions in a record of its own, and the premises inside it, 04146-01, in the catalogue's separate list of protected commercial establishments, printed as Casa Alberto Restaurante at Nivel 1. Nothing in that catalogue dates anything — each line is a code, a street, a name and a level, and no year anywhere — so the 1827 is untouched by it and the grade stays as it was. What it does establish is that the room is protected and not only the wall round it, which is what that list is for: the same pages carry Sobrino de Botín in the Calle de Cuchilleros, the Antigua Pastelería del Pozo, Capas Seseña and the Taberna Los Gabrieles, and on this street alone the Café Bar Milano, the Librería La Celestina and the Café Popular, which is the control that a house of this kind in this street would have been found. The weakness is the door number: the page Casa Alberto appears on prints no numbers at all, where other pages of the same list do, so the entry is identified by name and street. Spain's other reading is still out of reach — the National Library's newspaper library answers a security challenge rather than a page — so nothing has been read behind the year itself.", "sources": "https://www.casaalberto.es/historia | https://www.esmadrid.com/en/restaurants/casa-alberto | https://www.vozpopuli.com/gastropoli/lleva-abierto-desde-1827-sirviendo-uno-de-los-mejores-vermus-de-grifo-de-madrid.html | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4690768324 | https://geoportal.madrid.es/fsdescargas/IDEAM_WBGEOPORTAL/ESTATICOS_VISORES_URBANISTICOS/PG97/TEXTOS/CATALOGO_ELEMENTOS_PROTEGIDOS.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/casa-alberto-madrid/" }, { "slug": "casa-morales-seville", "name": "Casa Morales", "city": "Seville", "country": "Spain", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1850, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1850 dates a shop selling wine in bulk from the family's Valdepeñas bodegas. Drinking on the premises is described as starting gradually afterwards and no year for it has been traced, so drink-led trade here cannot be dated to the year the house claims.", "trade_today": "A wine bodega turned tapas bar; wine and beer are served at the counter, and nothing was cooked here until about 2000.", "evidence_notes": "The 1850 is the house's own — \"fundada en 1.850\" on its website — and Seville publishers repeat it without a document behind it. They name the founder as Leocadio Morales Prieto, who already owned bodegas in Valdepeñas and opened this one to sell their wine in Seville; no licence, deed or directory entry was traced, so the year is a claim. What those accounts also make clear is what the year dates. The business began as a despacho de vinos a granel, a shop selling wine in bulk, and drinking on the premises began only gradually afterwards; food is much later still, from about 2000, when Reyes Morales, the founder's great-granddaughter, put Sevillian tapas on. Because no year has been traced for the point at which the counter became the trade, the house is published with a page and a pin and left out of the ranking. It is plainly a drinking house now: the fascia still reads Hijos de E. Morales, which is the name under which OpenStreetMap records a bar at this doorway, and Time Out describes the day's tapas and drinks chalked on the tinajas in the back room, the tall clay jars the wine was once kept in.", "sources": "https://www.casamoralessevilla.es/ | https://www.timeout.com/es/sevilla/bares-y-pubs/bodega-casa-morales | https://sevillacb.com/en/asociados/bodega-morales/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5202188921 | https://aspicio1927.blogspot.com/2015/06/tabernas-antiguas-de-sevilla-bodega.html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/casa-morales-seville/" }, { "slug": "casa-pedro-madrid", "name": "Casa Pedro", "city": "Madrid", "country": "Spain", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1702, "earliest_documented": 1825, "gap_years": 123, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "A mesón and casa de comidas on the road north: no publisher traced records drink-led trade here in any year, so a ranking of houses that have poured continuously cannot place it.", "trade_today": "A restaurant of Madrid cooking with a counter inside the door; nobody publishes whether a drink is served at it without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The 1702 is the family's own, and the paper that would carry it is said to have been lost in the Civil War. Two Madrid accounts put the first written record a century and a quarter later: the City of Madrid's tourism service says the house was founded in 1702 \"although it is not documented until 1825\", and the Academia Madrileña de Gastronomía says the first written evidence of Casa Pedro's existence is from 1825 and that what came before it was destroyed in the war. Neither says what the 1825 document is, so the record here dates the house and not a licence. Since 2025 the family has publicly disputed the Guinness record held by Botín, and the press is narrower than the headlines: Infobae reported in July 2025 that the research was done by the husband of the present manager, and that what he found is an entry in the Catastro del Marqués de la Ensenada of 1750 naming three mesones in the village of Fuencarral, one of them kept by a Juan López said to be an ancestor — a documented inn in 1750 whose tie to this family is the family's own reading. El Español reported the same hunt in June 2025: a hundred years traced and forty-eight more wanted to reach 1702. That cadastral entry could not be checked here. Spain's national archives portal was searched on 12 September 2026 and holds no description of an inn or mesón at Fuencarral, and the Ministry of Culture's own site for the Respuestas Generales of the Ensenada — the volumes the 1750 entry would be in — answered every query that day with a database error. So the 1750 stays where the press left it, as a reading nobody outside the family has published. Whether a member of the public can be served a drink here without a meal is not stated in words by anything traced, which is why the question stays on the row. What is recorded is the fitting. The Academia describes the house working, before the 1950s, with a big counter and one small room that served as the dining room; Libertad Digital, writing in February 2026, says the space still has a bar at the entrance; and Infobae has the early trade resting on Garnacha and Moscatel sold to travellers. Against that, the city's tourism service classes the house as a restaurant and describes a brick wine cellar, a terrace and private dining rooms, with hours from one in the afternoon to half past eleven at night, and OpenStreetMap tags it amenity=restaurant. Its own site, casapedro.com, did not resolve at all when it was tried on 12 September 2026.", "sources": "https://www.esmadrid.com/en/restaurants/casa-pedro | https://academiamadrilenadegastronomia.org/casa-pedro/ | https://www.libertaddigital.com/madrid/2026-02-17/casa-pedro-tres-siglos-de-cocina-tradicional-en-el-barrio-de-fuencarral-7360813/ | https://www.infobae.com/espana/2025/07/13/el-documento-historico-que-resolveria-la-duda-del-restaurante-mas-antiguo-del-mundo-la-taberna-madrilena-que-puede-arrebatarle-el-record-a-botin/ | https://www.elespanol.com/madrid/ocio/20250621/restaurante-asegura-antiguo-mundo-puede-quitarle-record-guinness-casa-botin-documentos/1003743812536_0.html | https://www.telemadrid.es/programas/madrid-directo/Casa-Pedro-abierto-desde-1702-en-Fuencarral-2-2704249587--20240906082006.html | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4788592667 | https://pares.cultura.gob.es/ParesBusquedas20/catalogo/find?nm=&texto=Fuencarral%20mes%C3%B3n", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/casa-pedro-madrid/" }, { "slug": "central-hotel-hobart", "name": "Central Hotel", "city": "Hobart", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1818, "earliest_documented": 1818, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1923, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Tasmanian Heritage Register 2244, permanently registered as the Ship Hotel, 73 Collins Street", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "A licence was granted to Thomas L. Richardson on 3 October 1818 for the New Inn, known as the Ship Inn by 1821. That date rests on one pub historian's reading of the Hobart records; we have not seen the licence itself. The Tasmanian Heritage Register lists 73 Collins Street as the Ship Hotel and reads the standing building as an Old Colonial Georgian public house behind a Federation front of about 1900. The two accounts disagree about the walls: the register sees early colonial work behind a 1900 front, while the pub history has the corner house demolished in 1882 and trade moving next door into the inn's own billiard room, rebuilt in 1923. Either way the licence is much older than anything now standing.", "sources": "https://timegents.com/2014/11/15/the-ship-inn-hobart/ | https://timegents.com/2025/01/21/australias-rare-200-club-pubs-that-have-been-around-since-1825-or-more/ | https://onlineregister.heritage.tas.gov.au/Place/2244 | https://thr-public-datasheets.heritage.tas.gov.au/Report_Handler.ashx?heritagePlaceID=2244 | https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/liquor-and-gaming/liquor/community-information/liquor-licence-data", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/central-hotel-hobart/" }, { "slug": "cervejaria-trindade-lisbon", "name": "Cervejaria Trindade", "city": "Lisbon", "country": "Portugal", "nation": "", "type": "bierhalle", "claimed_founded": 1836, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Portuguese Wikipedia has the city council placing the building in Lisbon's cultural heritage in 1986 as a property of relevant historical and cultural value. The council's own heritage inventory holds it as the Edifício da Cervejaria Trindade (Antigo Convento da Trindade), Rua Nova da Trindade 20-20D, and says it falls within Lisboa Pombalina, classified as a Conjunto de Interesse Público — a classification of the Pombaline quarter as a whole, which describes and dates no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A tiled beer hall with a restaurant and a room for petiscos, in the rooms of a dissolved convent.", "evidence_notes": "Portuguese Wikipedia and the house agree on the story. The Trinitarian convent on this site was founded in 1294, burnt in 1704, wrecked by the earthquake of 1755 and burnt again the year after, and was closed when Portugal dissolved the religious orders in 1834. Manuel Moreira Garcia bought the buildings in 1835 and put a brewery in the church, cloister and refectory; the beer hall followed in 1836. He kept the convent's tiling and in 1863 commissioned the painted panels of the four seasons and the four elements from Luís Ferreira of the Viúva Lamego works. The Central de Cervejas bought brewery and hall in 1934, the first time the family did not hold it, and Lisbon council placed the building in the city's cultural heritage in 1986. No deed or licence has been read behind 1836, so the grade is C. Lisbon City Council's own heritage inventory, read as open data on 17 September 2026, is the first publisher here that is neither the house nor an encyclopaedia, and it agrees with the story in outline while differing from it in three places worth printing. It dates the convent to the middle of the thirteenth century rather than to 1294. It gives a different reason for the wreck of 1835 — the convent was partly pulled down to cut the Rua Nova da Trindade through the site, which is the street the house now fronts. And it says the facade is clad in tiles lifted from the convent's own ruins, while the tiles inside the beer hall, in what it confirms was the refectory, are Masonic in inspiration and are dated 1863 to Ferreira das Tabuletas. That is the same man the house calls Luís Ferreira: Luís António Ferreira, whose nickname came from the signboards he painted. The council's record of the house next door explains the Masonry. The Casa do Ferreira das Tabuletas at Rua da Trindade 28-34 was built in 1864 on the convent's ground for Manuel Moreira Garcia, whom the council describes as a Galician capitalist of strong Masonic convictions, and its tiled front carries the Eye of Providence among allegories of Earth, Water, Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Science. So the proprietor behind the 1836 beer hall is independently named and placed by the city, even though the year itself still rests on the house's own telling. On the protection, the council is careful in a way this page should be: it says the building falls within Lisboa Pombalina, which is classified as a Conjunto de Interesse Público — a classification of the Pombaline quarter, which draws a boundary and describes no single house inside it.", "sources": "https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervejaria_Trindade | https://www.cervejariatrindade.pt/historia/ | https://www.visitlisboa.com/pt-pt/locais/cervejaria-trindade | https://services.arcgis.com/1dSrzEWVQn5kHHyK/arcgis/rest/services/Patrimonio/FeatureServer/0/query?where=COD_SIG%3D%272008%27&outFields=*&f=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cervejaria-trindade-lisbon/" }, { "slug": "church-house-inn-stoke-gabriel", "name": "Church House Inn", "city": "Stoke Gabriel", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1108496), designated 9 February 1961", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "A church house: built by the parish beside its church, in this case said to have housed the masons who built it, and later used as the courthouse, which is what the old stocks outside the door are for. The national register of listed buildings enters it as a public house of circa the sixteenth century, and describes stone rubble under a slate roof, moulded ceiling beams, a roll-moulded screen at the south end and a large fireplace at the north; it has been listed at grade II since 9 February 1961. That is fabric of the century the house claims, with no document of drink sold here at the date, which is what a grade B says. The parish church adds the trade the building was put up for: the churchwardens brewed and sold ale at festivals, especially at Whitsun, as a fund-raising exercise that died out with the rise of Puritanism in the first half of the seventeenth century. CAMRA, which calls it the least-altered of Devon's many church house inns, dates it the same way.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/church-house-inn-stoke-gabriel-148679 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke_Gabriel | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1108496 | https://stokegabrielchurch.co.uk/our-community/church-house-inn/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1914764 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/16461668", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/church-house-inn-stoke-gabriel/" }, { "slug": "city-of-london-bar-st-julians", "name": "City of London Bar", "city": "St Julian's", "country": "Malta", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1914, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Two Maltese publications date the bar to 1914: Guide Me Malta, writing in August 2019 that it had stood for a hundred and five years, and Culture Trip in 2017. Both say it opened as British soldiers were being mobilised on the island at the outbreak of the First World War, and both name the founder, Karmnu Borg, whose son Salvu kept it from 1960 and whose grandson Julian has kept it since 1977. Neither cites a licence, a deed or a directory, so the year reaches us as a published account rather than as a record, and the grade says so. The doors were checked on 18 September 2026 against the Malta Tourism Authority's public register of the establishments it licenses, which carries the house as a licensed bar at 193 Triq il-Kbira, San Ġiljan, under reference BAR-14791. That is the regulator's word that the house may serve, and it is the first thing later than the 2019 article to say so. That a drink is served without a meal is not in doubt either: the house is mapped in OpenStreetMap as a public house, and the 2019 account describes patrons on the terrace, darts and a whisky against the winter.", "sources": "https://www.guidememalta.com/en/is-this-malta-s-oldest-bar-discover-the-story-behind-the-iconic-city-of-london | https://theculturetrip.com/europe/malta/articles/the-10-best-bars-in-malta | https://mta.com.mt/licences/licences/?type=bars", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/city-of-london-bar-st-julians/" }, { "slug": "clachaig-inn-glencoe", "name": "Clachaig Inn", "city": "Glencoe", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1726, "earliest_documented": 1866, "gap_years": 140, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of half a kilometre of glen around the house on 17 September 2026 returned no listed building, scheduled monument or inventory site at all", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's own claim is a length of time rather than a century: its about page says Clachaig has been a source of accommodation and hospitality to travellers for over three hundred years, which the ranking sorts from 1726. The 16th century came from Wikipedia, unsourced, and the inn does not repeat it, so the row now claims what the house claims. The same page produces the earliest records traced here, both transcribed by the inn from the statutory registers: the District of Glencoe and Appin marriage register for 13 August 1866 calls Janet Maclennan an innkeeper at Clachaig, and the register of births has her daughter born at Clachaig on 17 February 1864. Nothing documents the house three hundred years back, which keeps the grade at C. The national designations have now been searched rather than left open, and they are empty here: Historic Environment Scotland holds nothing at all within half a kilometre of the inn — no listed building, no scheduled monument, no inventory site — so there is no register description to date these walls, and the next thing to look for is an estate or licensing record rather than a designation. The Daynes family has run it since 1984.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clachaig_Inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/clachaig-inn-glencoe-176808 | https://clachaig.com/about-clachaig-inn/ | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/HES/HES_Designations/MapServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-5.0685%2C56.6600%2C-5.0504%2C56.6690&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=DES_REF%2CDES_TITLE%2CCATEGORY&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/538353 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC241100", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/clachaig-inn-glencoe/" }, { "slug": "confiteria-torres-santiago", "name": "Confitería Torres", "city": "Santiago", "country": "Chile", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1879, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1879 dates a confectionery opened by José Domingo Torres, and the house has stood in the Palacio Íñiguez only since 1904, so the year dates neither drink-led trade nor these rooms. It keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A Chilean restaurant and café on the Alameda, with a bar and a long vermouth habit.", "evidence_notes": "Spanish Wikipedia, citing Memoria Chilena and the house itself, records that a butler named Torres founded the confectionery in 1879 and that it has stood in the Palacio Íñiguez on the Alameda since 1904. A Santiago daily of the period gives the year a second and independent reading. El Cronista of Thursday 26 April 1979, read in the digital archive the Universidad Diego Portales keeps of it, reports the house preparing to mark the centenary of its inauguration that Saturday, with a plan of festivities across the year, a reissue of the confectionery's old eleven o'clock service and a small room set aside for daily tertulias — which puts the opening in the last days of April 1879. The same article disagrees with the encyclopaedia about the founder's name: it calls him Juan Domingo Torres, the mayordomo of a grand house and a virtuoso cook, where Spanish Wikipedia has José Domingo Torres, and nothing traced settles which is right. It also describes the premises as they stood in 1979 — by then only a bar-restaurant, in the paper's words — with the barros luco and the cola de mono both said to have been invented there, the drink poured only in December and mixed by a barman, Germán Erper, with a long cherrywood stick he took home at the end of the month. Bartolomé Alomar had owned it since 1959. In September 1910 the rooms held the vermouth of honour for the diplomats invited to Chile's centenary; presidents and writers used it; the family Soto Misseroni hold it now and have opened two further branches. No deed, licence or directory has been read behind 1879, so the grade is C, and nobody we can read says in words that a visitor is served a drink without a meal, which the page says as well.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiter%C3%ADa_Torres | https://www.confiteriatorres.cl/ | https://arpa.udp.cl/uploads/r/cenfoto-udp/0/e/b/0ebf637586decf5f5dbfe5912215125511db2856fc1183700677062b323a31dd/EC_1979_04_26_flat.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/confiteria-torres-santiago/" }, { "slug": "cramond-inn-edinburgh", "name": "Cramond Inn", "city": "Edinburgh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1670, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1670, "building_year_source": "Historic Environment Scotland listing LB28603, designated 14 December 1970", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB28603), designated 14 December 1970, in the Cramond A group", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1670 date here is the listing's rather than the pub's. Historic Environment Scotland (LB28603, category B, designated on 14 December 1970 and part of the Cramond A group) dates the north block to about 1670 and identifies it in the sketch used for the cover of John Philip Wood's account of the parish of Cramond, published in 1794 — pitch-roofed with its gable to the street, its dormerheads visible and a walled garden behind where the car park is now. That is documented fabric of the claimed age, which is what grade B means. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the record is more precise than this page had been about the rest of the house: the south wing is of about 1887, the crowsteps were probably added with it, Ian Lindsay and Partners recast and converted the whole in 1959-61, and the crowstepped and pantiled extension to the east is dated 1977. The interior was refurbished late in the twentieth century, and a doorway that was once outside, with its stone hoodmould and a window, now stands inside the building. What the register does not do anywhere in its text is say when drink was first served here: it traces the building through Wood's sketch of 1794, Leslie's plan of the Cramond roads of 1812, Wood's map of 1826 and the Ordnance Survey editions of 1895, 1908 and 1951, and none of those is cited for an inn. The house was already 'The Cramond Inn' in its statutory address when it was listed in 1970.", "sources": "https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB28603 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/cramond-inn-edinburgh-151807 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1218225 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramond", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/cramond-inn-edinburgh/" }, { "slug": "crown-anchor-inn-findhorn", "name": "Crown & Anchor Inn", "city": "Findhorn", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1739, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1739, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category C listed (HES LB8674)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1739 is the listing's. Historic Environment Scotland lists 44 Findhorn, the Crown and Anchor Inn, at Category C, dates it 1739 from the initials and year cut on the south-west skewputt, and describes a two-storey and attic crowstepped house with a later cottage beside it raised to two storeys, thatched in early photographs and flanked by 18th-century ashlar gatepiers. That documents the fabric at the claimed date, which is a grade B. When drink was first sold here is in nothing traced, and the inn publishes no date of its own; Wikipedia's article on Findhorn calls it the oldest surviving structure in the village.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findhorn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/crown-anchor-inn-findhorn-112811 | https://morayspeyside.com/listings/crown-anchor-inn/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/19774 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB8674", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/crown-anchor-inn-findhorn/" }, { "slug": "customs-house-hotel-hobart", "name": "Customs House Hotel", "city": "Hobart", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1846, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Tasmanian Heritage Register 2513, permanently registered", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The hotel's own history says the house was built for Charles Gaylor and licensed in 1846, trading first as the Chop House. The Tasmanian Heritage Register lists 1 Murray Street as the Customs House Hotel and describes a corner sandstone building with three bays to each street, a recessed corner entry, a parapet and hipped roof and twelve-paned sash windows, significant as an Old Colonial Georgian hotel. That fits the 1840s but is not a date. Neither licensing records nor a construction date have been traced, so 1846 remains the hotel's own.", "sources": "https://www.customshousehotel.com/ | https://onlineregister.heritage.tas.gov.au/Place/2513 | https://thr-public-datasheets.heritage.tas.gov.au/Report_Handler.ashx?heritagePlaceID=2513 | https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/liquor-and-gaming/liquor/community-information/liquor-licence-data", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/customs-house-hotel-hobart/" }, { "slug": "daijin-honten-nagoya", "name": "Daijin Honten", "city": "Nagoya", "country": "Japan", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1907, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1954, "building_year_source": "The house's own chronology, which dates the present building to Shōwa 29", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "An izakaya opening at a quarter to four in the afternoon: sake and beer are ordered from the table and the small dishes are taken from a serving stand.", "evidence_notes": "The 1907 is the house's own. Its chronology dates the founder Yamada Tokugorō's move from Ōharu to Nagoya, and the opening of the izakaya, to about Meiji 40, and the year is in its web address. Japanese Wikipedia gives 1907 in its infobox and in its history section, citing Nagoya guidebooks and the Chūnichi Shimbun, although its opening sentence prints 1909 beside Meiji 40, which is a year out and is the error to watch for in anything that copies it. No licence, directory or newspaper of the period has been traced, so the date rests on the family's account: grade C. The trade was interrupted rather than ended by the war — the premises burned in the Nagoya air raids of 1945, sake was a controlled commodity until 1948 and the shop sold shaved ice and seaweed noodles meanwhile — and the present building dates from 1954. Nothing traced says in words that a drink is served without food, which is why q1-drink-without-a-meal is in needs; what is published is that the house opens at a quarter to four in the afternoon, stocks only Kamotsuru, Kikumasamune, beer and, since 2018, shōchū and highballs, and describes itself as a long-established izakaya where sake is drunk with good food. A first-hand record has now been traced, and it is in print rather than in a licence. The National Diet Library's digitised collections hold Nagoya's classified telephone directories, and three of them name the house. The volume for 1922, edited by Moriya Hidekichi for the Jitsugyō Kōshinjo, lists Daijin Honten under the heading for Nagoya sake dealers, with Yamada Tokugorō as proprietor, an address at Shinyanagi-chō 4-11 in Naka ward and the telephone number Hon 1404. The 1923 volume from the same publisher repeats the entry, and the directory published by the Teiyū Kyōkai in 1935 carries Daijin Honten under food and drink provisions with the same proprietor's name and the same number, by then on the Hon 2 exchange. That is the family's own name in print fifteen years after the year the house claims, and thirteen years of it at one telephone number. Two things it does not settle. The trade it is filed under is the selling of drink rather than an eating house, and nothing in the entries says that anybody drank on the premises, so the earliest record of drinking here is still not fixed and that field stays empty. And the address is a pre-war one: the house is at 1-5-6 Sakae today, and beyond the ward and the proprietor's name nothing traced here ties Shinyanagi-chō 4-11 to the present site, although a printed guide to Nagoya's drinking houses, cited by the Japanese Wikipedia article, says the pre-war shop reached as far as the Misonoza theatre, which is a thread to follow rather than a link this page can yet make.", "sources": "https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%94%9A%E6%9C%AC%E5%BA%97 | https://www.daijin1907.com/overview | https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/970716/1/107 | https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/924501/1/132 | https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1027065/1/238", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/daijin-honten-nagoya/" }, { "slug": "de-drie-fleschjes-amsterdam", "name": "De Drie Fleschjes", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1650, "earliest_documented": 1618, "gap_years": -32, "building_year": 1888, "building_year_source": "https://amsterdamopdekaart.nl/1850-1940/Gravenstraat/De_Drie_Fleschjes", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The city historian Maarten Hell, whose book on the Amsterdam herberg covers 1450 to 1800, went through the archives for Amsterdam750 and found a drinking house on this spot already in 1618, under the name Het Sufflet — older than the 1650 the proeflokaal claims, and the reason this row is graded A. Hell also notes why earlier evidence is thin everywhere in the city: tap licences were only kept systematically from 1742. The 1618 is his finding and nobody else's. Amsterdam op de kaart, the second publisher here, has the tavern De Drie Fleschjes opening in this street in 1650 and says it was probably where the tasting room still is, at number 18, calling that proeflokaal the oldest in Amsterdam; it dates the rebuilding of the distillery to 1887-88, by the architects Van Rossem & Vuyk for J. H. G. Bootz, and quotes the Algemeen Handelsblad on the new iron-galleried interior. An eighteenth-century gable stone of three bottles survives on the front. The name De Drie Fleschjes appears only after 1782, and the front is lettered ANNO 1619.", "sources": "https://amsterdam750.nl/verhaal/wat-is-de-oudste-kroeg-van-amsterdam/ | https://www.dedriefleschjes.nl | https://amsterdamopdekaart.nl/1850-1940/Gravenstraat/De_Drie_Fleschjes | https://api.data.amsterdam.nl/v1/horeca/exploitatievergunning/?adres%5Blike%5D=Gravenstraat%2018*&_format=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/de-drie-fleschjes-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "duke-of-marlborough-hotel-russell", "name": "Duke of Marlborough Hotel", "city": "Russell", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1827, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1875, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The hotel traces itself to Johnny Johnston's grog shop of 1827 — an ex-convict, well regarded locally, in its own telling — and claims New Zealand's first liquor licence, issued in 1840. Neither has been traced to a document, and no entry on the New Zealand Heritage List for the building could be found. Two buildings were lost before this one: the first burned in the Battle of Kororāreka in 1845 and a successor in 1931. The house standing now was built in 1875 at Cable Bay for telegraph workers, shipped down the coast and hauled onto this site by steam traction engine in 1932, so the fabric is a century younger than the claim and was never built as a pub at all. The hotel says it has been at the heart of Russell since 1827 and names the Meins as its present hosts.", "sources": "https://www.theduke.co.nz/history | https://www.theduke.co.nz/ | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/go-nz-where-is-new-zealands-oldest-pub/WBAGX5IHUNX2EOUVI5SLMTMY6Q/ | https://www.theduke.co.nz/history-heritage/ | https://northlandhistory.blogspot.com/2014/01/who-had-first-publicans-license-for.html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/duke-of-marlborough-hotel-russell/" }, { "slug": "duke-of-wellington-hotel-melbourne", "name": "Duke of Wellington Hotel", "city": "Melbourne", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1853, "earliest_documented": 1853, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1850, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Victorian Heritage Register H1175", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Victorian Heritage Register puts the core of the house at 1850, designed by the architect Richard Dalton for the carpenter and businessman Timothy Lane, with additions of 1857 and 1904 and a stripping of the original facade detail in 1969. Lane applied for a licence in 1850 and failed, applied again in 1851 and failed again; the place was run as a boarding house by a Mrs Smith until 1853, when Richard Dalton — presumably the same man who drew it — got the licence, announced in The Argus on 30 June that year. So the building is three years older than the licence, and the register is blunt that the exterior treatment and interior are far from representative of a mid-nineteenth-century building, though it notes that the frontage above the first-floor sills, openings included, appears unaltered. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the entry says four more things this page had not carried. It credits the house with the longest-running hotel licence in Melbourne, which is where the claim printed here comes from — Heritage Victoria, not the city council this page had named. It gives a reason for Lane's two failures: he had lost his licence for the Builders Arms in Queen Street in 1850, having been in and out of several Melbourne hotels through the 1840s, and the register takes that account from Michael Fooks's report on the house written for Carlton United Breweries in June 1980. It supplies a contemporary witness, which is more than a licence date — William Kelly, writing up Victoria in the 1850s, records sleeping here overnight in 1853. And it describes the trade the house did: a working men's pub, the register suggests, for the warehousemen of the Flinders Street stores and later for journalists from the Herald and Weekly Times. The corner itself is part of the significance, because corner sites were sought after for hotels, being able to address two streets, and the splayed corner here was the original entrance. The building next door came into the hotel by degrees: a pair of three-storey rendered brick warehouses of 1884, whose upper floors became hotel accommodation early in the twentieth century while two shops held the ground floor until 1960. The register is explicit that the 1884 and 1904 parts are not of state-level significance and that the 1850 and 1857 buildings are. A public note on the heritage database says the 1857 and 1904 sections were demolished about 2004, and the house closed for redevelopment from 2006 to 2013.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Wellington_Hotel,_Melbourne | https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/melbournes-oldest-pub/ | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/2760 | https://dukeofwellington.com.au/ | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/2760/download-report", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/duke-of-wellington-hotel-melbourne/" }, { "slug": "durty-nellys-bunratty", "name": "Durty Nelly's", "city": "Bunratty", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1620, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1620 and the story of a landlady called Nelly are the pub's own tradition, and no documentary or architectural record of that date has been traced. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, queried again on 18 September 2026, holds no entry for this house: within five hundred metres it records Bunratty Castle, the bridge beside the pub and the house now used as the Bunratty Castle Hotel, and nothing else, so the absence is a search rather than an oversight. Clare County Council says the same in its own way. Volume 4 of the county development plan for 2023 to 2029 is the record of protected structures, and the Bunratty area has five entries in it — the bridge, the castle, the Bunratty Castle Hotel, Bunratty House and Crughaun mediaeval church. This house is not among them, and the name Nelly appears nowhere in the volume. The bridge is the interesting neighbour, because the pub's story puts Nelly at the toll on it: the council dates the standing single-arch humpback bridge to 1804, built of rubble and dressed limestone, and says it replaced an earlier mediaeval bridge. So there was a crossing here long before the bridge that stands, and neither record dates a house beside it. What is on record about the present trade is the licence: Revenue's register of renewed liquor licences, current to 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence at Bunratty under reference LIP0831, held by Clare Taverns trading as Durty Nellys.", "sources": "https://www.durtynellys.ie/ | https://weloveireland.ie/irelands-oldest-pubs/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx | https://www.clarecoco.ie/sites/default/files/2025-01/volume-4-record-of-protected-structures-clare-county-development-plan-2023-2029-55986.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/durty-nellys-bunratty/" }, { "slug": "edinburgh-castle-hotel-adelaide", "name": "Edinburgh Castle Hotel", "city": "Adelaide", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1837, "earliest_documented": 1837, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1878, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "City of Adelaide Local Heritage Place (2013)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The hotel makes the claim itself, in the line across its website: good company since 1837. The City of Adelaide heritage sheet supports it and sharpens it, recording South Australia's first publican's licence issued for the site on 31 May 1837, for Guthrie's Hotel, renamed the Edinburgh Castle Inn in 1839. The current building is an 1878-79 rebuild. The pub closed in September 2018 and reopened in December 2023, so trading was not continuous.", "sources": "https://d31atr86jnqrq2.cloudfront.net/heritage-places/heritage-place-information-sheet-233-239-currie-street.pdf | https://theshout.com.au/australian-hotelier/south-australias-oldest-pub-reportedly-closes/ | https://glamadelaide.com.au/first-look-adelaides-iconic-edinburgh-castle-hotel-reopens-with-refreshed-historic-flair/ | https://timegents.com/2024/01/20/early-inns-and-taverns-of-adelaide-and-south-australia/ | https://www.edcastlehotel.com.au/ | https://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/rubyhoo-whos-ruby-tour/197697", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/edinburgh-castle-hotel-adelaide/" }, { "slug": "el-rinconcillo-seville", "name": "El Rinconcillo", "city": "Seville", "country": "Spain", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1670, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1670 foundation is the tavern's own claim, repeated in Wikipedia's list of oldest companies; no primary record was checked and current trading status could not be re-verified online.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies | https://www.elrinconcillo.es | https://www.elrinconcillo.es/noticias/la-tertulia-el-rinconcillo-presenta-su-cartel-de-semana-santa-2026/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/el-rinconcillo-seville/" }, { "slug": "esterhazykeller-vienna", "name": "Esterházykeller", "city": "Vienna", "country": "Austria", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1683, "earliest_documented": 1828, "gap_years": 145, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in Austria's register of protected monuments, which the federal monuments office publishes nowhere we can read. Two area designations cover it and neither dates or describes any building: the City of Vienna's protection zone for the 1st district, the Innere Stadt, and the core zone of the world heritage site the city calls Vienna – Historic Centre, which takes in the whole of that district. The federal monuments office's survey of the roofs of the Innere Stadt, read through the city's map service on 18 September 2026, has no entry at this address; within about a hundred and fifty metres it holds three — the Haus zur roten Rose at Naglergasse 12, whose street range it dates 1899, a high baroque house at Naglergasse 21 with ranges dated 1767 and 1822, and the church Am Hof — and it surveys selected houses rather than all of them, so its silence is not a finding that this one is unprotected", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1683 is the house's siege story. The City of Vienna's historical encyclopedia dates the cellar's opening to 1808 and says nothing under five Maß of wine was sold here until 1828, when it was first poured by the glass, so the claimed year does not date drink-led trade on these premises.", "trade_today": "A Viennese wine cellar whose Stüberl pours beer and wine daily, while the deep cellar is shut until further notice.", "evidence_notes": "Two Viennese accounts of this cellar disagree, and the city's is the harder one. The house tells the Turkish siege of 1683, when Prince Paul Esterházy's men were given free wine before the fighting; the wall that ran past the Haarhof was not the one the Turks were shooting at, because the city's own archaeological map of the old town puts nothing later than the middle ages at this corner — the Reflertor gate, dated 1100 to 1529, and the wall of the Roman legionary camp, both within seventy metres of the door, and no line of mediaeval or later fortification here at all; that, it says, was the beginning of wine service here, and a Vienna daily repeated the 1683 in April 2026 when new tenants took the place on. The City of Vienna's historical encyclopedia, which is written from property and licensing records, says instead that the Esterházykeller opened in 1808, that nothing under five Maß of wine was sold at first, and that only from 1828 was it also poured by the seitel, a glass measure. A cellar that would sell you no less than five Maß was a wine store rather than a drinking house, so the date recorded here for wine by the glass is 1828 and the 1683 is shown as the claim it is. The encyclopedia adds that Adolph von Menzel painted the cellar in 1871. The house calls its vaulting fifteenth-century on one page and puts sixteenth-century patina on another. What trades today needs saying carefully. The cellar's own page has it shut from 12 January until further notice, while the Esterházystüberl beside it — the same business, address and telephone — opens daily from eleven to ten with lunch menus, beer and wine specialities and a pavement garden in summer; the Vienna weekly Falter lists the house open daily eleven to ten with the kitchen closing at nine, and that last hour is a drink served after the food has stopped. A Vienna daily reported the insolvency in 2025 and, in April 2026, that two restaurateurs had taken the house on and would clean the old brickwork through July and August. The City of Vienna's own building inventory was read on 18 September 2026 and it dates the house over the cellar rather than the cellar: Naglergasse 9, which is also Haarhof 1 and Wallnerstraße 4, is entered as the Palais Esterházy, five storeys, built in 1819, in the building period 1781 to 1848, surveyed in November 2000. The same map service shows why the vaults can be older than that. Its archaeological map of the old town carries four separate houses on this ground, numbered 161, 162, 163 and 164 in the eighteenth-century house numbering, where the present palace stands under one number, 276 — so the cellar the wine is poured in ran under houses pulled down to build the palace above it. Nothing read dates the brickwork. And this is the city speaking again rather than a second publisher: the encyclopedia, the map service and the protection zone are all the City of Vienna, while Austria's federal register of protected monuments is still published nowhere a reader can reach.", "sources": "https://www.esterhazykeller.at/keller | https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Esterh%C3%A1zykeller | https://www.heute.at/s/343-jahre-alt-beruehmter-heuriger-sperrt-wieder-auf-120176597 | https://www.falter.at/lokal/3121/esterhazystueberl-esterhazykeller | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2670820058 | https://data.wien.gv.at/daten/geo?service=WFS&request=GetFeature&version=1.1.0&typeName=ogdwien%3AGEBAEUDEINFOOGD&srsName=EPSG%3A4326&bbox=16.367%2C48.20968%2C16.3678%2C48.21048%2CEPSG%3A4326&outputFormat=json | https://data.wien.gv.at/daten/geo?service=WFS&request=GetFeature&version=1.1.0&typeName=ogdwien%3ADACHKATASTEROBJEKTEOGD&srsName=EPSG%3A4326&bbox=16.3662%2C48.20888%2C16.3686%2C48.21128%2CEPSG%3A4326&outputFormat=json | https://data.wien.gv.at/daten/geo?service=WFS&request=GetFeature&version=1.1.0&typeName=ogdwien%3AARCHAEODATIERUNGOGD&srsName=EPSG%3A4326&bbox=16.3668%2C48.20948%2C16.368%2C48.21068%2CEPSG%3A4326&outputFormat=json", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/esterhazykeller-vienna/" }, { "slug": "farmers-arms-tavern-cabarlah", "name": "Farmers Arms Tavern", "city": "Cabarlah", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1863, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1904, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The ABC (2022) reports its claim to be Queensland's longest continually licensed pub, licensed in 1863. An earlier building burned down and was replaced in 1904. The licence has not been checked against records. Its own site showed current opening hours when we checked in September 2026.", "sources": "https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-28/historic-pubs-queensland-drought-floods-lockdown-struggles/101079926 | https://www.thefarmersarmscabarlah.com/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/farmers-arms-tavern-cabarlah/" }, { "slug": "fortune-of-war-hotel-sydney", "name": "Fortune of War Hotel", "city": "Sydney", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1828, "earliest_documented": 1830, "gap_years": 2, "building_year": 1921, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New South Wales State Heritage Register 01547, listed 10 May 2002; within The Rocks, itself of state heritage significance", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The State Heritage Register has the emancipist Samuel Terry building a terrace of three on this site, completed in the mid to late 1820s and constructed as a public house known as the Fortune of War; its footprint appears in Robert Russell's survey of 1834, and the register places that terrace at today's 139-143 George Street. The first recorded licensee was John Boreham in 1830, for the sale of wines, malt and liquor — a former miller transported on the Marquis of Wellington in 1815 and recorded as a dealer in the census of 1828. Walter Nottingham Palmer kept it from 1833 to 1839, and Robert White Moore held the licence from 1842, with a midnight licence and leases renewed in 1844 and 1851. The allotment was formally granted to Terry's executors in January 1841. The present building is Tooth & Co.'s rebuilding of 1921-22, so the claim of 1828 rests on the licence and the site and not on the fabric. The land is owned by Place Management NSW, the state body for The Rocks.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_of_War_Hotel | https://www.fortuneofwar.com.au/about | https://manofmany.com/culture/food/fortune-of-war-hotel-bistro-now-open | https://pubtic.com.au/the-matter-of-australias-oldest-pub/ | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5053163 | https://rocksdiscoverymuseum.com/place/fortune-of-war", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/fortune-of-war-hotel-sydney/" }, { "slug": "fraunces-tavern-new-york-city", "name": "Fraunces Tavern", "city": "New York City", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1762, "earliest_documented": 1762, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1719, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New York City Landmark (1965); in the Fraunces Tavern Block historic district, entered on the National Register on 28 April 1977 (ref. 77000957), and individually on 6 March 2008 (ref. 08000140)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A museum upstairs with several bars and dining rooms below; drink is served at the bar without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "Samuel Fraunces opened the Queen's Head here in 1762 and Washington's farewell to his officers in 1783 is well documented. But the building later had many non-tavern uses and was largely reconstructed in 1907; a 2021 study found more original brick than assumed. 'Continuous since 1762' is not accurate. Two registers were read on 17 September 2026 in place of the encyclopedia the page had been leaning on. New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission building database gives 54 Pearl Street as built in 1719, original use a single-family free-standing house, and states plainly that it was built as a house and converted into a tavern in 1762 by Samuel Fraunces, with the whole first storey removed in July 1890 to lower the floor to street level. The National Park Service's register locations service returns both National Register entries: the Fraunces Tavern Block district, certified 28 April 1977 under 77000957, and the tavern itself, certified 6 March 2008 under 08000140. So the house is 1719, the trade is 1762, and both now rest on the registers rather than on a summary of them.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunces_Tavern | https://www.frauncestavern.com/ | https://data.ny.gov/resource/9s3h-dpkz.json | https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/gpmc-yuvp.json?%24where=upper%28des_addres%29%20like%20%2754%20PEARL%25%27 | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/0/query?where=RESNAME+LIKE+%27%25Fraunces%25%27&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CResType%2CAddress%2CCity%2CState%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/fraunces-tavern-new-york-city/" }, { "slug": "garricks-head-pub-victoria", "name": "Garrick's Head Pub", "city": "Victoria", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1867, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub advertises itself as Victoria's oldest, trading since 1867, and no founding record or building date has been traced; the house occupies the ground floor of the Bedford Regency on Government Street, with its entrance on Bastion Square. British Columbia's register of liquor-licensed establishments carries a Liquor Primary licence, number 115527, for the premises at 1140 Government Street under the establishment name Bedford Regency, held by Garricks Pub Ltd. and running to 30 June 2027, with a second Liquor Primary licence at the same address for the Churchill. A liquor-primary licence is the province's drink-led class, so nobody here has to order food to be served.", "sources": "https://www.garrickshead.com/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/business/liquor-regulation-licensing/liquor-licence-and-permits/licensed-establishments-in-bc", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/garricks-head-pub-victoria/" }, { "slug": "gaststatte-rohrl-eilsbrunn", "name": "Gaststätte Röhrl", "city": "Eilsbrunn", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1658, "earliest_documented": 1658, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1665, "building_year_source": "Date inscribed on the building, recorded in the Bavarian list of architectural monuments", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed monument D-3-75-199-22 in the Bavarian list of architectural monuments", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "In 1658 Andreas Röhrl married Susanna Hofmeister, daughter of the innkeeper Georg Hofmeister, so the inn was already there, and his family has kept it ever since; Guinness World Records recognised it in 2010 as the oldest continuously family-run inn. The Bavarian monument list, which protects the house under number D-3-75-199-22, describes an eighteenth-century mansard-roofed building whose core is probably older, inscribed 1665, remodelled about 1839 and lengthened by a gabled range, with taproom fittings of the first half of the twentieth century and a function room of 1902 next door. The 1665 inscription is therefore a date on the fabric rather than a date for the trade, which the marriage of 1658 carries.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaststätte_Röhrl | https://www.gaststaette-roehrl.de/ | https://erlebe.bayern/insider/muk-roehrl-gastwirt/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Baudenkm%C3%A4ler_in_Sinzing | https://geodaten.bayern.de/denkmal_static_data/externe_denkmalliste/pdf/denkmalliste_merge_375199.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/gaststatte-rohrl-eilsbrunn/" }, { "slug": "genoa-bar-and-saloon-genoa", "name": "Genoa Bar and Saloon", "city": "Genoa", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1853, "earliest_documented": 1863, "gap_years": 10, "building_year": 1863, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1853 is published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine, which says the bar was built that year as Livingston's Exchange and is Nevada's oldest thirst parlor; the state tourism board repeats it. The 1974 historical marker on the building disagrees, saying Al Livingston built it in 1863 and Frank Fettic bought it in 1884. The 1853 date may reflect Genoa's settlement era rather than this bar.", "sources": "https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=20661 | https://travelnevada.com/bars/genoa-bar-saloon/ | https://savingplaces.org/stories/genoa-bar-and-saloon-in-genoa-nevada | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/75001108_text", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/genoa-bar-and-saloon-genoa/" }, { "slug": "german-arms-hotel-hahndorf", "name": "German Arms Hotel", "city": "Hahndorf", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1839, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "State Heritage Place, South Australian Heritage Register (state heritage number 13140), confirmed 20 November 1986", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1839 date — \"Hahndorf's meeting place since 1839\" — comes from the hotel's own material. South Australia's heritage register confirms the German Arms Hotel at 67–69 Mount Barker Road as a State Heritage Place from November 1986 but records no construction date. The register also lists a separate State Heritage Place at 84 Mount Barker Road as the former German Arms and the former Jaensch senior house, so the name has moved along the street: the 1839 belongs to the business rather than to these walls. Mount Barker Road is the town's main street, which is why the hotel gives its address as Main Street.", "sources": "https://www.germanarmshotel.com.au/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20260305230944/https://maps.sa.gov.au/heritagesearch/HeritageItem.aspx?p_heritageno=16170 | https://web.archive.org/web/20250517153044/https://maps.sa.gov.au/heritagesearch/HeritageItem.aspx?p_heritageno=16172", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/german-arms-hotel-hahndorf/" }, { "slug": "ginjinha-sem-rival-lisbon", "name": "Ginjinha Sem Rival", "city": "Lisbon", "country": "Portugal", "nation": "", "type": "ginjinha", "claimed_founded": 1890, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A doorway counter selling ginja and the house's own Eduardino liqueur, drunk standing in the street.", "evidence_notes": "Lisbon city council's register of shops with a history gives the fullest account: the house was founded at the end of the nineteenth century by João Lourenço Cima, grandfather of the present owners, keeps its original front, and probably took its Art Déco fittings in the 1920s, when that style was everywhere. Portuguese Wikipedia puts the year at 1890. Nothing documentary has been read behind either, so this is a C. The register is also unusually clear about the trade: selling over the counter was new when the ginjinhas took it up, and because the rooms are tiny the drinking spills into the street. The house opens at eight in the morning and serves ginja, capilé, groselha and its own Eduardino liqueur, named after a clown from the Coliseu next door who is said to have mixed it; the name was registered as a trademark in 1908.", "sources": "https://lojascomhistoria.pt/lojas/a-ginjinha-sem-rival | https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginjinha", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ginjinha-sem-rival-lisbon/" }, { "slug": "ginza-lion-beer-hall-tokyo", "name": "Ginza Lion Beer Hall", "city": "Tokyo", "country": "Japan", "nation": "", "type": "bierhalle", "claimed_founded": 1934, "earliest_documented": 1934, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1934, "building_year_source": "https://www.bunka.go.jp/koho_hodo_oshirase/hodohappyo/93558001.html", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Japan) — the Ginza Lion Building, recommended for registration by the Council for Cultural Affairs on 19 November 2021 and registered in February 2022", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Japan's Council for Cultural Affairs recommended this building for registration on 19 November 2021, and its papers date it to Shōwa 9 — 1934 — describing a six-storey commercial block in Ginza 7-chome whose ground-floor beer hall, with tiled walls, beam-shaped ornament and a glass mosaic mural, it calls a masterpiece among the country's beer halls, trading since before the war. The Tokyo Shimbun reported on 15 April 2022 that the registration had followed that February. Chuo City's own account of the building, a column by the curator Masuyama Kazunari of the ward's board of education printed in its newsletter of 21 October 2022, agrees on the year and adds the rest: built in 1934 as Dai-Nippon Beer's head office to the design of Sugawara Eizō and by the contractor Takenaka Kōmuten, altered on a large scale in 1939 and 1979 and strengthened with seismic walls in 2003, at 7-9-20 Ginza. The column describes the ground-floor Beer Hall Lion as part of the building's design, with glazed tiles from the Tsubaki kiln and twelve glass mosaics drawn up by Sugawara and made by the glass artist Ōtsuka Kizō, and says the hall is held to have been used almost as built after the occupation forces requisitioned it in 1945, as a beer hall for them alone. It gives no opening day. Japanese Wikipedia, drawing on Sapporo Beer's own published history, records that the head office was finished on 8 April 1934 on the site of the Ginza beer hall burnt in the Kantō earthquake, and that the beer hall reopened as a tenant of the new building and has been in the same room since. The room is dated by the state and by the ward, and the trade in it is dated by the brewer's history to the same year, which is why this is an A. The company counts its own founding from Japan's first beer hall, the Yebisu of 1899, which stood at Ginza 8-chome and is gone.", "sources": "https://www.bunka.go.jp/koho_hodo_oshirase/hodohappyo/93558001.html | https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B5%E3%83%83%E3%83%9D%E3%83%AD%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AA%E3%83%B3 | https://www.ginzalion.jp/ | https://www.city.chuo.lg.jp/a0052/bunkakankou/rekishi/kunibunkazai/041021.html | https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/171832", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ginza-lion-beer-hall-tokyo/" }, { "slug": "gleneagles-bar-mgarr-gozo", "name": "Gleneagles Bar", "city": "Mġarr, Gozo", "country": "Malta", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1732, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1732, "building_year_source": "Għajnsielem local council's history of Mġarr harbour, which credits the barrakka of 1732 to Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have not traced a scheduling for the bar itself; the niche of St Andrew on its wall is number 01073 in the National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1732 dates the harbour's barrakka, the cabin in which ferry passengers waited, and not a drinking house. Nothing traced says when that cabin began to serve drink, so no year dates drink-led trade here to the year the building carries.", "trade_today": "A bar beside the old ferry jetty; OpenStreetMap maps it as a café, and the last published account of its counter is from 2005.", "evidence_notes": "The 1732 comes from the Għajnsielem local council's own account of Mġarr harbour, which says the building went up as the port's barrakka — the cabin where passengers waited for the passage boats — under Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena, and which places it beside an osteria that was still standing when the account was written. English Wikipedia carries the same year and the sloping roof. The year therefore belongs to a shelter for travellers rather than to a drinking house, and nothing traced says when the cabin began to sell drink, which is why the year is graded as tradition and the entry sits outside the ranking. That drink is served here is recorded by a publisher with no interest in the house: the Times of Malta, in an appreciation of Philip Nicholson printed on 14 July 2005, has him at the counter with his elbows on it, quietly amused by the tourists who came in hunting for the author A. J. Quinnell — a pen name he built from the rugby player Derek Quinnell and the initials of the barman's son. That account is twenty-one years old, and no later description of the counter has been traced: Times of Malta, Malta Today and gozonews.com all refuse an automated request. What has been traced is the Malta Tourism Authority's public register of licensed establishments, read on 18 September 2026, which carries Gleneagles as a licensed bar at 10, Triq ir-Rebħa, Għajnsielem GSM 2400, under reference BAR-16436. OpenStreetMap records the house as a café, mapped in December 2024.", "sources": "https://web.archive.org/web/20130228012657/http://www.ghajnsielem.com/places/mgarr.html | https://web.archive.org/web/20120503100857/http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20050714/social/social-and-personal.84184 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%A1arr,_Gozo | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Quinnell | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_in_G%C4%A7ajnsielem | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/12443693739 | https://mta.com.mt/licences/licences/?type=bars", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/gleneagles-bar-mgarr-gozo/" }, { "slug": "gordon-hotel-portland", "name": "Gordon Hotel", "city": "Portland", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1842, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1928, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1842 is a pub historian's: Time Gents has the house established that year as the Commercial Inn and renamed the Gordon in 1890. The hotel's own website tells it differently, saying the present building was built in 1885, replacing the 1840 Commercial Hotel, and claiming the oldest continuous licence issued in Victoria. In 1949 the Portland historian Noel Learmonth wrote that it held the longest continuously held licence in the state. The present building was reworked from the 1870s to 1928, and the Duke of Wellington and Mac's Hotel have also claimed early Victorian licences.", "sources": "https://timegents.com/2016/07/17/victorias-oldest-pub-license/ | https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/state-histories.html | https://thegordonhotel.com.au/ | https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/victorian-liquor-licences-by-location", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/gordon-hotel-portland/" }, { "slug": "gospoda-pod-modrym-fartuchem-torun", "name": "Gospoda Pod Modrym Fartuchem", "city": "Toruń", "country": "Poland", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1489, "earliest_documented": 1489, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In Poland's register of historic monuments and its heritage evidence record, published by the Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa (records PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_N_04_BK.121341 and PL.1.9.ZIPOZ.NID_E_04_BK.235170)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "Polish cooking at the tables, and in the evening a beer house with some three hundred regional and craft beers.", "evidence_notes": "The house claims 1489 — \"tradycyjnie od 1489 r.\" — and for once the national register says the same year. The record for Rynek Nowomiejski 8 published by Poland's Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa states that the first confirmed mention of an inn on this spot comes from 1489, and dates the fabric in stages: brick houses whose cellars survive, possibly raised in the 1420s; the baroque front at the beginning of the eighteenth century; a range added behind in the late nineteenth; a full restoration between 1955 and 1959. The same record says the premises have served their original purpose without interruption since they were built, which is a strong sentence for a register to write and is still not a licence or a deed — the 1489 mention itself is cited rather than quoted, and we have not seen it. Nor has anyone here found it anywhere else. The National Library of Poland's digital collections were searched for the house on 12 September 2026 and hold one item under the name: a photograph of the Gospoda \"Pod Modrym Fartuchem\" taken in 1919 by Günter Reinert, catalogued among German photographs of Toruń and indexed under taverns and restaurants. Nothing printed earlier than the twentieth century came back, and the other thing the library holds under the sign is a novel — Maria Bogusławska's Gospoda pod Modrym Fartuszkiem of 1922, a historical romance set in seventeenth-century Pomerania, which is a story about the house rather than evidence of it. The name is younger than the trade: the register puts Modry Fartuch, the blue apron the town's craftsmen wore, in the baroque period, and the legend of a particular innkeeper founding the house belongs to the town's storytelling rather than to the record. Toruń's tourism service calls it the oldest catering house in the town and counts two hundred kinds of beer; the house counts three hundred and calls that side of itself Krajina Piva. Polish local titles reported that it announced a closure during the pandemic and was then taken on again, and neither report could be read from here because both titles refuse an automated request, so this row rests on what it can show: its own site was live on 12 September 2026 with a menu, a booking page and hours from noon, and OpenStreetMap carries the same hours.", "sources": "https://podmodrymfartuchem.pl/onas/ | https://zabytek.pl/pl/obiekty/torun-gospoda | https://visittorun.com/pl/content/gospoda-pod-modrym-fartuchem | https://zwiedzajtorun.pl/gospoda-pod-modrym-fartuchem/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/353045157 | https://polona.pl/search/?query=Modrym%20Fartuchem", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/gospoda-pod-modrym-fartuchem-torun/" }, { "slug": "grace-neills-donaghadee", "name": "Grace Neill's", "city": "Donaghadee", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1611, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1611 date, originally as the King's Arms, is widely repeated (Wikipedia, tourism guides) but no licence or deed was found. Its reported Guinness 'oldest pub' listing is its own claim. The bar's own site is current rather than abandoned — it advertises tribute nights and a Christmas 2026 brochure — but its security certificate expired in August 2026, so a browser refuses the page: it is cited here as an archived copy and the link on this page goes to Grace Neill's own Facebook account. Current trading rests on those and on 2026 travel coverage.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaghadee | https://rebelatlas.com/destinations/europe/ireland/where-is-irelands-oldest-pub-10-historic-pubs-with-a-claim-to-the-title/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/grace-neills-bar-donaghadee-117831 | https://www.facebook.com/graceneills1611/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20260609145045/http://graceneills.com/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/953094", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/grace-neills-donaghadee/" }, { "slug": "grand-view-hotel-cleveland", "name": "Grand View Hotel", "city": "Cleveland", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1851, "earliest_documented": 1860, "gap_years": 9, "building_year": 1852, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Queensland Heritage Register 600771, entered provisionally on 21 August 1992 and permanently on 21 October 1992", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Queensland Heritage Register's entry, number 600771, sets out the chain. Francis Edward Bigge, a grazier from Mt Brisbane Station and one of the men pressing for Cleveland Point to be made the port for Moreton Bay, bought the site in August 1851. The earliest section appears to have been up by 1852 and then to have stood empty for several years: it was a dwelling, not an inn, and the town knew it as Bigge's Folly. John Vincent Cassim, a boarding-house keeper from Kangaroo Point, leased it from 1855 to 1860, and in the middle of 1860 stabling, a coach-house, a store and a tap were built. By 1862 the publican William Rae held it as the Brighton Hotel, with a bathing-house, a jetty and a ten-tonne pleasure cutter. The publicans Andrew and Mary Goodall bought it in 1878, the family held it until 1936, the name Grand View dates from about 1910, and the two-storeyed form followed the railway reaching Cleveland. The register calls it one of the oldest hotels in Queensland in continuous use. PubTIC, weighing the claims to be Australia's oldest pub, gives 1851 for the build and says the house did not begin trading until 1855; the register shows that 1851 is the year Bigge bought the land, that what opened in 1855 was a boarding house, and that drink is recorded on the premises from 1860. The year the house claims is the year it was begun as a private dwelling, which is why the grade stays at B. The State Library of Queensland's index of licensed victuallers, published as open data by the Queensland government, transcribes the licence lists printed in the Queensland Government Gazette between July 1900 and July 1914, and it carries this house through those years. The Cleveland district's first list here, gazetted on 7 August 1900, names five licensees and records no hotel names at all; from the list gazetted on 29 January 1901 the houses are named, and L. H. Firth holds the Brighton beside the Cleveland, Capalaba, Redland Bay and Wellington Point houses. Firth keeps the Brighton to 1903, then Edward Cardigan Clarke has it in 1904 and 1905, Mary J. O'Brien in 1906, Annie Esther Fogarty in 1907, Thomas Olesen in 1908 and A. P. Radford in the list gazetted on 3 March 1909. No Brighton appears after that. A Grand View Hotel appears instead, under Harris Toub, in the list gazetted on 31 August 1909, while the district's other five houses go on unchanged, so the register's about 1910 for the change of name is a few months late and the new name is in the gazette by the end of August 1909. Toub holds the licence through the lists to 1912, and Hans Nielsen has it in those of 1912 and 1913, the last gazetted on 22 April 1913. One caution the index imposes on itself: it gives the licence district and not the street, and its coordinates are the district's, so the Brighton and the Grand View are tied to this house by the heritage register's account of a house that changed its name, and not by anything printed in the gazette.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_View_Hotel | https://pubtic.com.au/the-matter-of-australias-oldest-pub/ | https://www.mustdobrisbane.com/features/brisbanes-historic-pubs | https://qhr.detsi.qld.gov.au/asset/?slug=qld-600771-grandview-hot-ce29cb | https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/state-library-of-queensland-licensed-victuallers-index", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/grand-view-hotel-cleveland/" }, { "slug": "hadleys-orient-hotel-hobart", "name": "Hadley's Orient Hotel", "city": "Hobart", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1862, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Permanently registered on the Tasmanian Heritage Register as place 2534", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A four-star hotel; its Art Bar opens daily at four with a happy hour, and serves anyone who walks in without a room or a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The date the hotel gives for itself and the date the travel trade gives for it are twenty-eight years apart. Hadley's own history page says the house was founded and run as Webb's Family Hotel in 1862, that the Hadley family bought it in 1890 and gave it their name, and that a consortium took it over in 1935 and kept the name; its timeline of guests starts with the comedian Sir William Don in 1862. The widely repeated line that it was built in 1834 by convict labour comes from the state tourism service and the booking sites, and the Tasmanian Heritage Register does not support it: the datasheet for place 2534, permanently registered, calls the building a rare surviving large-scale nineteenth-century accommodation house and a multi-storey Victorian commercial building, which puts the fabric after 1837, and records no founding date at all. No licence, directory or newspaper has been traced for either year from here. What is not in doubt is the drinking: the hotel's Art Bar opens daily from four, pours cocktails, beer and wine and puts a pianist in on Saturday evenings, so a visitor who is not staying can be served. Roald Amundsen stayed here in 1912 after reaching the South Pole and telegraphed the news from Hobart.", "sources": "https://www.hadleyshotel.com.au/blog/history-and-scandals-hadleys-orient-hotel-hobart | https://thr-public-datasheets.heritage.tas.gov.au/Report_Handler.ashx?heritagePlaceID=2534 | https://www.discovertasmania.com.au/accommodation/hadleysorienthotel/ | https://openhousehobart.org/buildings/hadleys-orient-hotel/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/331439948", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hadleys-orient-hotel-hobart/" }, { "slug": "hanbury-arms-caerleon", "name": "Hanbury Arms", "city": "Caerleon", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1565, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Built in the C16 as Ty Glyndwr, a townhouse of the Morgan family; it passed to the Hanbury family in the 1720s and became a pub around the 1750s.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1565 is neither the inn's, which publishes nothing we could find, nor CAMRA's, which gives the 16th century and no year. HistoryPoints, the Welsh local-history project behind the QR plaques on buildings, states that most of this riverside inn dates from about 1565, with the rear section rebuilt probably in the 18th century and the windows reshaped in the early 19th, and that it began as a town house for the Morgan family known as Ty Glyndwr. Thick stone walls, the stone fireplace and the Round Tower of Caerleon castle forming part of the premises support the claimed age of the building, which is a grade B. It was not a drinking house then, and the two accounts of when it became one disagree: HistoryPoints has it an inn during the 17th century, close to the quay on the Usk, while Wikipedia has the Hanburys buying it in the 1720s and the pub taking their arms for its name around the 1750s, which is the date this row records for drink-led use and the reason it is outside the Top 100. Neither account cites a record, and the earlier one would put the house back in the ranking, so it is a question still open rather than a change made. Tennyson began the Idylls of the King while lodging here in 1856.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbury_Arms | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caerleon | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/hanbury-arms-caerleon-161582 | https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=the-hanbury-arms-caerleon | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/216261", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hanbury-arms-caerleon/" }, { "slug": "hand-shears-london", "name": "Hand & Shears", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1532, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1896, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1532 is the pub's own, lettered across the top of its website as 'The Hand & Shears, est. 1532'. It is not supported by a published record, and CAMRA's note of a Smithfield link going back to 1123 is not either; the listed building is mid-19th century with an 1896 interior.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/hand-shears-london-156248 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_and_Shears | https://www.thehandandshears.com | https://alondoninheritance.com/londonpubs/hand-and-shears/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/294079", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hand-shears-london/" }, { "slug": "hero-of-waterloo-hotel-sydney", "name": "Hero of Waterloo Hotel", "city": "Sydney", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1843, "earliest_documented": 1845, "gap_years": 2, "building_year": 1843, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New South Wales State Heritage Register 00633, listed 2 April 1999", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The State Heritage Register has the land sold by a man named Clarke to the builder George Payten in 1840; Payten built the Garrison Church in 1842 and this hotel in 1843-44, and took out a licence in the name Hero of Waterloo in 1845. The stone for both church and hotel probably came from the Kent Street quarries, the earliest in Sydney. The register also explains the room a drinker stands in: the present main bar was two rooms until the dividing partition was taken out in 1928. The story that the building was a convict-built barracks of about 1804 is disputed, and the smugglers' or press-gang tunnel to the harbour is folklore. The register records the current use as pub, bar and restaurant. A second publisher now carries the same house. The Dictionary of Sydney, the city's scholarly reference work, archived in 2021, has an entry written by Terri McCormack in 2010 and corrected in March 2022, and it is firmer than the register on the two dates that matter here: the hotel was built in 1844 by George Paton, a stonemason and builder — the Dictionary says the spelling Payten is sometimes cited in error — who had bought the Windmill Street land from John Clarke and had built the Garrison, or Holy Trinity, Church in 1842, and Paton obtained the first licence for his Hero of Waterloo on 30 June 1845. So the year on the pub's sign is the building's, not the licence's, and the licence has a day and a month. The Dictionary's building record adds the run of publicans behind the counter: Paton himself from April to September 1845, then Thomas Kirkman, who had kept the Coach and Horses in Brown Bear Lane in the Rocks, until late 1849, and from 1850 Jonathan Brown of the Whaler's Arms on the opposite corner, still there in 1853. Kirkman's father John had come out as a convict in 1810, which is the house's real convict connection; the 2022 correction was to say that the publican was not the convict Thomas Kirkman Browne, as the entry had previously had it. On the 1804 barracks the Dictionary is plainer than the register: the claim rests on the gauge marks on the sandstone blocks, and the house was in fact built in 1844. It calls the early trade the crews of the whaling and sealing vessels that tied up at Millers Point, dates the minimal alterations to the conversion of two rooms into the present main bar in 1928, tells the tunnel and press-gang story as an enduring legend, and says the Hero is one of several hotels vying for the title of the city's oldest continuously trading pub. Its own sources are named: Gary Bell's Historic Pubs around Sydney of 2007, the City of Sydney's Millers Point and Walsh Bay heritage review of 2007, Joan Lawrence's Sydney from the Rocks of 1988, the State Heritage Register entry, and the Society of Australian Genealogists' transcription of publicans in the County of Cumberland from state records.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Waterloo_Hotel | https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/hero_of_waterloo_hotel | https://heroofwaterloo.com.au/ | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045581 | https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/hero_of_waterloo_hotel", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hero-of-waterloo-hotel-sydney/" }, { "slug": "hofbrauhaus-am-platzl-munich", "name": "Hofbräuhaus am Platzl", "city": "Munich", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "bierhalle", "claimed_founded": 1589, "earliest_documented": 1828, "gap_years": 239, "building_year": 1896, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1828", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1589 is the founding of the Bavarian dukes' court brewery, which Duke Wilhelm V set up at the Alter Hof because his household was spending too much on beer brought in from elsewhere; his successor Maximilian I moved the brewing to the Platzl in 1607. Neither was a house serving the public. The City of Munich's own account is plain that ordinary Munich citizens were admitted in 1828, when Ludwig I allowed the court's tap to serve the population at large, and that is where the public house's record begins — which is why the house sits outside the ranking of pubs pouring continuously from before 1750. Max Littmann rebuilt it as a neo-Renaissance beer palace, finished in 1897, the brewing having gone out to Haidhausen in 1896 and on to Munich-Riem in 1988; post-war restoration was completed with the reopening of the festival hall in 1958.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofbräuhaus_am_Platzl | https://www.hofbraeuhaus.de/en/ | https://www.muenchen.de/sehenswuerdigkeiten/bauwerke-und-denkmaeler/hofbraeuhaus", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hofbrauhaus-am-platzl-munich/" }, { "slug": "hole-i-the-wa-dumfries", "name": "Hole i' the Wa'", "city": "Dumfries", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1620, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (LB26236)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1620 date is CAMRA's Dumfries and Stewartry branch note, not a document. Historic Environment Scotland (LB26236, category B) describes the inn as much-altered mid 18th-century work at the rear of a mid 18th-century street block, and lists it for historic interest because Burns used it. The house does keep a site of its own, found on 18 September 2026, and it publishes its hours: half past nine in the morning until half past midnight Monday to Wednesday, until one in the morning Thursday to Saturday, from eleven on Sunday, with food served until two in the afternoon from Wednesday. Two registers agree with it. Hole i' the Wa' Ltd is an active Scottish company, number SC546981, whose latest confirmation statement is dated 4 October 2025 and whose accounts run to March 2025; and the Food Standards Agency carries the premises at 156 High Street as a pub, though its last hygiene inspection there was in 2018 and CAMRA last surveyed the bar in 2015. So the trading is settled, and what remains thin is the 1620.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/hole-i-the-wa-dumfries-148394 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB26236 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/876262 | https://holeithewadumfries.co.uk/ | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC546981", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hole-i-the-wa-dumfries/" }, { "slug": "hole-in-the-wall-armagh", "name": "Hole in the Wall", "city": "Armagh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1615, "earliest_documented": 1693, "gap_years": 78, "building_year": 1615, "building_year_source": "Local history reported in Armagh I", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the bar in the Northern Ireland register of historic buildings. A search of Armagh city centre on 17 September 2026 returned twenty-five entries, among them the technical institution on Market Street (HB15/20/004), the terrace at Jenny's Row and the banks on Scotch Street, and nothing for the bar or for McCrums Court", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The date the bar keeps, 1615, is the year the building went up as Armagh's jail, where families passed food to prisoners through a hole in the wall, which is where the name comes from. Drinking came later: the same local account gives 1693 for the first licence as a public house, and that is the first record of a drinking house here rather than a prison. The Northern Ireland register of historic buildings has now been searched across the city centre and holds no entry for the bar or for McCrums Court: within the streets around it the register carries the technical institution on Market Street, the terrace at Jenny's Row, the banks on Scotch Street and the former Beresford Arms on Upper English Street. So no listing text exists to test either year, and no licensing register has been traced either, which keeps this at C with the 1693 licence as the earliest date anyone cites.", "sources": "https://armaghi.com/news/armagh-news/armagh-behind-the-bar-the-hole-in-the-wall-owner-talks-rascals-rogues-and-remarkable-memories/308138 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/hole-in-the-wall-armagh-117665 | https://www.facebook.com/theholeinthewallarmagh/ | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Listed_Buildings_Centroid/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-6.6549%2C54.3467%2C-6.6511%2C54.3489&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=HB_Ref_No%2CAddress%2CCurrentGra&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/724892", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hole-in-the-wall-armagh/" }, { "slug": "holohans-enniscorthy", "name": "Holohan's", "city": "Enniscorthy", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1740, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1775, "building_year_source": "https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/15603108/holohans-slaney-place-enniscorthy-enniscorthy-wexford", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NIAH reg. no. 15603108, rated of regional importance", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The owners have published their own research, which concludes that the Bear Inn stood here by the 1740s. It points at real documents: the Bear Inn is named in reports of the 1743 Annesley inheritance case, and Sir Vesey Colclough's use of it as a meeting place appears in evidence to a Commons select committee on the Enniscorthy election of 1793. We have not read either against the originals, and the identification of that inn with these premises rests on the pub's account, so no earliest documented date is recorded here. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage dates the standing house 1765-1785, records its original use as a house rather than an inn, and dates the pub front to about 1975 — later than the claim, and so unable to carry it. That makes this a C. The research itself names what would settle it: the 1785 survey of the Earl of Portsmouth's Enniscorthy tenants, on microfilm in the National Library of Ireland, would say who held the Bear Inn. Enniscorthy's own case is a reminder of why Irish dates are hard — the owners list the 1798 rebellion and the burning of the Public Record Office in 1922 among the reasons the paperwork is gone. The present trade, which had never been confirmed from a dated source, is on the state's list: Revenue's register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence at Slaney Place, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, under reference WXP0364, held by Niall Holohan in his own name and trading as Holohans.", "sources": "https://holohans.ie/holohans-pub-formally-known-as-the-bear-inn-history-and-ownership-prior-to-1900/ | https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/15603108/holohans-slaney-place-enniscorthy-enniscorthy-wexford | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3045709850 | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/holohans-enniscorthy/" }, { "slug": "hope-and-anchor-tavern-hobart", "name": "Hope and Anchor Tavern", "city": "Hobart", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1807, "earliest_documented": 1807, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1820, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Tasmanian Heritage Register (1998)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Robert Knopwood's diary for 25 July 1807 records Hopkins opening a public house at the Sign of the Whale Fishery, and the ABC has reported doubt about whether that house stood on this site. The premises went on the Tasmanian Heritage Register in 1998, on the strength of their archaeological importance. The trade has not been unbroken: the pub was closed to the public from 2008 to 2014, and earlier in the 1980s, with the licence kept alive, so continuously licensed is not the same claim as continuously trading. The house itself claims to be the oldest pub in Australia and says it has served food and drink since 1807; New Norfolk's Bush Inn makes the rival claim. Hobart Brewing Co has held the lease since 2025 and the doors are open seven days from noon.", "sources": "https://www.hopeandanchor.au/history | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-29/history-of-australias-oldest-pub-hope-and-anchor/12496094 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_and_Anchor_Tavern | https://craftypint.com/news/3858/history-ahoy-hobart-brewing-co-take-over-the-hope-and-anchor | https://pubtic.com.au/oldest-rivalry-keeps-brewing/ | https://www.hopeandanchor.au/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hope-and-anchor-tavern-hobart/" }, { "slug": "horeke-hotel-horeke", "name": "Horeke Hotel", "city": "Horeke", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1833, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the hotel's, reported by the New Zealand Herald: the Horeke claims to be the country's oldest surviving pub, with a history dating to 1833, though the Herald adds that it was not legally licensed then. RNZ (2018) notes parts may date to the 1820s shipbuilding era. No documentary evidence has been published. The Herald described it in 2020 as trading with food and lodging, and the Bay of Islands tourism listing still shows it open on the Hokianga waterfront. The hotel's own site was read on 18 September 2026 and raises a question this page has to put plainly: it offers rooms, e-bike hire and a shuttle for riders of the Twin Coast trail, describes its dining as for guests only, asks for bookings by email and reproduces a guest's line that this is not a hotel to drop in to. Nothing it publishes says whether a traveller who is not staying may walk in and be served a drink, and the answer to that is what decides whether a house belongs on this site at all. Until somebody in Hokianga can answer it, the trading is recorded as believed rather than confirmed. There is a harder reading than the hotel’s own words, and it was made on 18 September 2026. New Zealand’s Ministry of Justice publishes the national register of active alcohol licences every month; the August 2026 file holds 12,086 rows and not one of them mentions Horeke — not the hotel, not its street, not the settlement. The register does hold the hotels at Opononi, Mangonui, Waipapakauri and Awanui, which is the control that says the search would have found this house had it been licensed. A monthly register can lag a transfer, and a licence may be held in a name nobody here has guessed, so this is not a statement that the bar is shut. It is a statement that nothing public shows a licence to sell drink at this address, which for a house on a site about pubs is the question rather than a detail.", "sources": "https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/go-nz-five-of-our-oldest-pubs-for-summer/R2AEO3E3CXVXDGOKDT3TOIC4FE/ | https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018660891/new-zealand-s-finest-historic-pubs | https://www.visitboi.co.nz/listing/horeke-tavern | https://www.horeke-hotel.com/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/horeke-hotel-horeke/" }, { "slug": "hortobagyi-nagycsarda-hortobagy", "name": "Hortobágyi Nagycsárda", "city": "Hortobágy", "country": "Hungary", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1699, "earliest_documented": 1699, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1699, "building_year_source": "Hungarian monument register, törzsszám 1851, read at muemlekem.hu, which dates the house 1699 and its rebuildings 1781 and 1830", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument, register number 1851; the register classes the house as a commercial and hospitality building and dates it 1699", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A csárda restaurant with the Shepherds' Museum across the road; its own list prices wine by the decilitre and pálinka by the measure.", "evidence_notes": "Three publishers with no interest in the house agree on 1699, and one of them says what happened that year. The Hungarian monument register, entry 5333 under törzsszám 1851, dates the building to that year, records that it was rebuilt in 1781 and again in 1830, and classes it as a commercial and hospitality building — its original type given as a drinking and entertainment house. Hungarian Wikipedia's history of the parish puts the csárda up in the summer of 1699 on the Debrecen side of the bridgehead, where a wooden bridge of 1697 crossed the Hortobágy, and says the city of Debrecen also charged its tavern-keeper with taking the toll. The Hortobágy National Park Directorate, the state body that runs the puszta and the exhibition inside the house, dates the founding to 1 June 1699 and to an act of the city: on that day the council of Debrecen sent barrelled wine out with its wine inspector, János Tikos, to the toll point at Máta, otherwise Hortobágy, by the bridge that was then still timber, where some building of the state postal service probably already stood; beside the toll house and the post the city built its cellared tavern house, and the selling of the wine was put in the hands of the toll collector, a man named István Vasvári. The directorate writes that account from the Debrecen local historians it names, Lajos Zoltai and István Ecsedi, rather than from the city minute, which we have not read, so the year still rests on published local history and on the register's dating of purpose-built inn fabric — but it is now an account of wine being sold here in 1699 and not only of a building standing. The directorate adds what the rest of the fabric is: the wagon stand beside the road, rebuilt in 1785 with a hundred and forty-five thousand bricks in walls 95 centimetres thick that are still standing, kept the travellers' horses and is now the Shepherds' Museum; the nine-arched bridge outside was built between 1827 and 1833 on piers of dacite tuff; and the word csárda itself is first written down in Hungarian only in 1755, the older word for a house like this being vendégfogadó, a guest house. Petőfi stopped here in 1842 and wrote his song about the landlady of the Hortobágy inn, whom the directorate names as Viktória Pérchy, then keeping the house with her husband Antal Héczei Szabó; Richárd Füredi's tablet to the poet went up in 1923. The 1781 that circulates as a founding date is the register's rebuilding. Nobody states in words that a drink may be had without a meal; what is published is a drinks list that prices house wine by the decilitre, pálinka at two and four centilitres and one draught beer, and opening from eleven in the morning — and the national park, which shows its free exhibition inside the building during the csárda's own opening hours, treats the house as the working inn it describes. The tourism service gives the hours as eleven to eight every day, where OpenStreetMap has the house shut on Mondays and Tuesdays. Hungarian Wikipedia records that it has been open again since August 2011.", "sources": "https://www.muemlekem.hu/muemlek/show/5333 | https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortob%C3%A1gy_(telep%C3%BCl%C3%A9s) | https://visithortobagy.com/hu/hortobagyi-csarda | https://visithortobagy.synergyfox.app/public/1/hazi_etlap_allo_a4_2025_aug_17.pdf | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1601125718 | https://www.hnp.hu/hu/szervezeti-egyseg/turizmus/oldal/pusztai-csardakrol | https://www.hnp.hu/hu/szervezeti-egyseg/turizmus/csardak-utja/oldal/hortobagyi-csarda-kiallitas", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hortobagyi-nagycsarda-hortobagy/" }, { "slug": "hussongs-cantina-ensenada", "name": "Hussong's Cantina", "city": "Ensenada", "country": "Mexico", "nation": "", "type": "cantina", "claimed_founded": 1892, "earliest_documented": 1892, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1892, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1892 is the house's own, published under its name. The Hussong's history page says the cantina opened in 1892 with the second liquor licence issued in Mexico and describes Johan Hussong, a German immigrant, serving nickel beer and dime whiskey in what was then a fishing village, with the Sutherland stage company watering horses and passengers outside; the Ensenada cantina's Instagram account, which is the only channel it keeps, carries 'Desde 1892' under its name. Wikipedia and a travel encyclopedia give the same year for the licence, and the business is said still to hold municipal licence number 002 in the same building. The claim that the margarita was invented here in 1941 is one of several rival stories.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussong%27s | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hussongs-cantina | https://www.hussongscantina.com/about/history/ | https://www.instagram.com/cantina_hussongs/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hussongs-cantina-ensenada/" }, { "slug": "hviids-vinstue-copenhagen", "name": "Hviids Vinstue", "city": "Copenhagen", "country": "Denmark", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1723, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed (fredet) in 1964, as part of Kongens Nytorv 19 and Lille Kongensgade 4, matrikel 4 in Øster Kvarter", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Hviids dates itself to 1723 and says its rooms are nearly three hundred years old. The date is repeated everywhere in Copenhagen and nobody who repeats it points at a document; the fullest version, that a pair of French wine merchants were selling here outside the guild and that the trade was made lawful in 1723, is told without a source. What has now been read is the house. Indenforvoldene.dk, which catalogues every property inside the old ramparts and cites the National Museum's survey Historiske huse i det gamle København of 1972, dates the corner building at Kongens Nytorv 19 to 1767, with its fourth storey added in 1801, and records the property as listed in 1964. That is forty-four years after the year over the door. Whether the cellar the vinstue occupies survives from an earlier house on the plot is not something any source we have read states either way, so the fabric is not documented at the claimed date and no record of drinking at it has been traced: this is a C, not a B. Despite the name, it works as a traditional cellar bar and serves beer as well as wine.", "sources": "https://www.hviidsvinstue.dk/ | https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/hviids-vinstue-gdk793010 | https://www.indenforvoldene.dk/kongens-nytorv-19-lille-kongensgade-4 | https://www.findsmiley.dk/1272679", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/hviids-vinstue-copenhagen/" }, { "slug": "in-den-ouden-vogelstruys-maastricht", "name": "In den Ouden Vogelstruys", "city": "Maastricht", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1309, "earliest_documented": 1840, "gap_years": 531, "building_year": 1730, "building_year_source": "The gable stone dated 1730 above the door, recorded in the Rijksmonument entry for Vrijthof 15 (27697)", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 27697, Vrijthof 15, entered in the national register on 30 June 1966 (cadastral parcel Maastricht B 997); the register records the original function as a dwelling house", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1309 dates a stone house, not a drinking house; the first hospitality recorded in it is a koffiehuis of about 1840.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house makes its own claim and makes it carefully: the present front dates from 1730, it says, but the Struys is said to be far older, and the oldest reports of the building go back to 1309, so the café counts a history of more than 700 years. The 1309 is real and it is not about drink. A deed of the St Servaas chapter of 11 September 1309 names a stone house on this corner belonging to a knight of Schonecghen, and in 1414 the same property is the former house of Schonegge. The house name de Struys first appears in 1474, when Peter in den Stroys owned it, and Josua de Grave's drawing of 1669 shows a bird hanging as a sign over the corner. None of that is evidence of public drinking. What the nineteenth century shows instead is a house lived in by a doctor, a paymaster, an excise officer, a man of private means and a shopkeeper, divided behind two front doors — and the first hospitality anyone has traced in it is the koffiehuis the widow Schiffelers-Thijssen kept from about 1840. By the early twentieth century Vrijthof 15 was the café de Struisvogel; Nicolaas Hoen reopened it in April 1908 as the newly restored café-restaurant de oude Struisvogel, and in 1980 the house kept a 250th anniversary that the Dutch Wikipedia article calls somewhat debatable, counting from the 1730 front. That article is blunt about the wider claim: the often-heard assertion that the Vogelstruys is Maastricht's oldest café is not supported by historical evidence, and the oldest mention of a café at this address is nineteenth-century. The national register says the same thing in its own way. The Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed entered the house on 30 June 1966 as monument 27697, and the whole of its description is the broad cornice front with its corner blocks, its Namur stone doorway and the gable stone lettered IN DEN VOGEL STRUYS / 1730 — the register dates nothing here earlier than that stone, and the function it records for the building is a dwelling house, not an inn. Café 't Rozenhoedje on the Boschstraat, which this site also holds, claims 1466 for the title Maastricht's oldest. So a C, with drink-led trade documented from about 1840 and the house outside the Top 100. Drinking without eating is the whole business: the front room is a brown café with a terrace of about 150 chairs on the Vrijthof, the tables are pushed aside for dancing on Friday and Saturday nights, and the dining is next door in the brasserie the house took on in 2019. OpenStreetMap tags the address as a restaurant, which the café's own pages do not bear out.", "sources": "https://www.vogelstruys.nl/over-de-struys | https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_den_Ouden_Vogelstruys | https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_rijksmonumenten_in_Maastricht/Vrijthof | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2804891620 | https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/27697", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/in-den-ouden-vogelstruys-maastricht/" }, { "slug": "jama-michalika-krakow", "name": "Jama Michalika", "city": "Kraków", "country": "Poland", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1895, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the Polish register of monuments as A-59 — the Małopolska Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments lists ul. Floriańska 45 as the Jama Michalika tenement, entered on 21 July 1971 in place of a decision of 15 July 1930", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1895 dates the Cukiernia Lwowska, a confectioner's shop, and no publisher traced names a year for when drink-led trade began here, so a ranking of houses that have poured continuously cannot place it.", "trade_today": "A kawiarnia and restaurant with a cabaret museum in its back rooms; a visitor guide says you may drop in for a drink at the bar.", "evidence_notes": "The 1895 is the house's own — \"rok założenia 1895\" stands at the top of its website — and the City of Kraków's official service says what that year dates: the premises opened as the Cukiernia Lwowska, founded by Jan Apolinary Michalik, which is a confectioner's shop and not a drinking house. The same page dates the literary cabaret Zielony Balonik here from 1905 to 1912, and the enlargement of 1910, when a room with a stage was built under a glass roof and Karol Frycz and Henryk Uziembło designed its stained glass. Nothing traced names a year for when drink began to be sold over the counter, which is why no earlier record is shown and why the house sits outside the ranking of pubs that have poured continuously. The building is protected, which this page had not established: the Małopolska Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments publishes the Kraków section of the national register as a list, and its issue of June 2024 carries ul. Floriańska 45 under the number A-59 as the Jama Michalika tenement, entered on 21 July 1971 and replacing an earlier decision of 15 July 1930. The conservator names the building by the café in it, and the decision it supersedes is older than the cabaret's fame. Whether a member of the public may be served a drink without a meal is answered here, in words, which is more than most continental houses of this kind manage: a Kraków visitor guide tells readers to drop in for a drink at the bar and take a look at the room, and the house's own English page offers traditional Polish alcohols beside the cakes and the old Polish cooking. Thinner is the proof that the door opened this week. The house's own site was answering on 17 September 2026 but publishes nothing dated later than a New Year's Eve poster of November 2025, under a footer that still reads 2024; the Kraków Festival Bureau's visitor portal publishes hours from nine in the morning to ten or eleven at night without dating them; and OpenStreetMap's survey of the door, which has it as a café, is from 3 August 2024. So the page says believed trading, and a check belongs on it in the next status pass.", "sources": "https://www.krakow.pl/instcbi/15666/inst/84836/921/Kawiarnia-Jama-Michalika.html | https://visitkrakow.com/kawiarnia-jama-michalika/ | https://krakow.travel/222-krakow-jama-michalika | https://jamamichalika.pl/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jama_Michalika | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3320712471 | https://www.wuoz.malopolska.pl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Wykaz-wpisow-do-Rejestru-zabytkow-Krakow-czerwiec-2024.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/jama-michalika-krakow/" }, { "slug": "jean-bonnet-tavern-bedford", "name": "Jean Bonnet Tavern", "city": "Bedford", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1762, "earliest_documented": 1779, "gap_years": 17, "building_year": 1762, "building_year_source": "Stone building dated c. 1762 in its National Register listing", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "National Register of Historic Places, certified 1 August 1979 under reference 79002164, where it is entered as Bonnet's Tavern", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A tavern, restaurant and bed and breakfast; the tavern stays open later than the kitchen and serves drink without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The stone building is dated about 1762 in its National Register listing, built by the Indian trader Robert Callender, who sold it in 1779 to Jean Bonnet and his wife; documented inn use begins there, and the Pennsylvania marker has Bonnet and his heirs keeping it from 1779 to 1815. A meeting of Whiskey Rebellion men here in 1794 is recorded. So the 1762 belongs to the walls and 1779 to the trade. The house is a restaurant, tavern and bed and breakfast today, publishing hours of eleven to nine Monday to Saturday and closed on Sunday, with the tavern open later than the kitchen. The listing itself was read on 17 September 2026 through the National Park Service's register locations service, which had only been taken from an encyclopedia before. It confirms reference 79002164, certified on 1 August 1979, for a building four miles west of Bedford at the junction of US 30 and PA 31 in Napier Township — and records the house under the name Bonnet's Tavern rather than Jean Bonnet's. The register entry carries no construction date of its own, so the about-1762 still rests on the nomination text, which the Park Service has not digitised.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bonnet_Tavern | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=60115 | https://www.jeanbonnettavern.com/ | https://www.jeanbonnettavern.com/hours/ | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/0/query?where=NRIS_Refnum%3D%2779002164%27&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CResType%2CAddress%2CCity%2CState%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/jean-bonnet-tavern-bedford/" }, { "slug": "kafana-loncic-sombor", "name": "Kafana Lončić", "city": "Sombor", "country": "Serbia", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1884, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in Serbia's register of immovable cultural property. The register's own search, read on 18 September 2026, returns 38 entries for the municipality of Sombor — 36 monuments, one site of note and two protected urban areas — and none is this kafana or any address on Miloša Obilića. The control is that the register does list plain town houses by street and number: five in Kralja Petra I, which it still calls Maršala Tita, at numbers 2, 8, 9, 10 and 19, one at Venac Stepe Stepanovića 22 and one at Trg oslobođenja 6. The two protected areas are the old core, Venac, entered in the central register on 30 December 1997 under a protection decision of 19 June 1969, and the square Trg bratstva i jedinstva; both name the central streets they take in and neither includes Miloša Obilića", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Radio-Television Vojvodina, the province's public broadcaster, reported in December 2017 that Sombor's oldest kafana has worked without a break since 1884, shutting only briefly when the occupying army entered the town in 1941, and that it has been in one family the whole time; the first keepers were Bogoljub Hiđoš and his wife Eržebet, and Aleksandar Katić had it at the time of writing. Serbian Wikipedia gives the same year and the address on Miloša Obilića. Nothing documentary has been read behind 1884, so this is a C. It was a stopping place for farmers coming in from the outlying homesteads to the market, who left their horses and carts in the yard; the counter, the checked tablecloths and the shape of the glasses are described as unchanged, and the regulars play chess, dominoes and cards. OpenStreetMap records it as a pub. Its trade has not been confirmed since that reporting, so the page says so. Serbia's register of immovable cultural property was read for the whole municipality on 18 September 2026 and this house is not in it. The register returns 38 entries for Sombor — 36 monuments, one site of note and two protected urban areas — and none is the kafana or any address on Miloša Obilića. It does list plain town houses by street and number, which is the control: five in Kralja Petra I, the street the register still calls Maršala Tita, at numbers 2, 8, 9, 10 and 19, one at Venac Stepe Stepanovića 22 and one at Trg oslobođenja 6, dated between the first half of the nineteenth century and 1912. The two protected areas are the old core, Venac, entered in the central register on 30 December 1997 under a protection decision of 19 June 1969, and the square Trg bratstva i jedinstva; both name the central streets they take in and neither includes Miloša Obilića, which runs out of the town. What a second publisher does give is the trade around the claimed year. Milan Stepanović's survey of Sombor's old inns on the Vojvodina history site Ravnoplov works from the town's own records: Evliya Çelebi found two hans here in 1665; the chamber administration let Martin Lipković raise a beerhouse on the ruins of the Turkish bath in 1699; the charter of the free royal city took the licensing of inns into the town's own hands in 1749; 34 innkeepers petitioned against their tax in 1851; and in 1884, the year this house gives for its opening, 137 Sombor men are recorded as holding an inn-keeper's business, with nearly every street in the town carrying one or two. The Lončić is among the inns that survey names between 1785 and the Second World War, and a photograph caption there calls it a Sombor kafana that has gone on without a break for 135 years. None of that is a document for 1884, so the grade stays C, but it is the first independent sight of the house in print and it sets the claim in a town where inns were counted.", "sources": "https://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/zivot/magazin/za-loncic-najstariju-somborsku-kafanu-ceo-svet-zna_881663.html | https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%9B%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%9B | https://www.novosti.rs/vesti/srbija.73.html:586936-Vojvodjanske-price-Bircuz-pamti-salasare | https://nasledje.gov.rs/index.cfm/spomenici/spomenici_data?naziv=&mesto=0&okrug=0&opstina=78&ulica=&vrsta=0&vrstaOstalo=0&period=0&unesko=2&autor=&ktitor=&projektant=&oblikSvojine=0&kategorija=0&ustanova=0&brojKatastarskeParcele=&katastarskaOpstina=&brojReg=&brojCentReg= | https://www.ravnoplov.rs/stare-somborske-kafane/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kafana-loncic-sombor/" }, { "slug": "kafana-znak-pitanja-belgrade", "name": "Kafana Znak Pitanja", "city": "Belgrade", "country": "Serbia", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1823, "earliest_documented": 1826, "gap_years": 3, "building_year": 1823, "building_year_source": "https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0_%3F", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Monument of culture (споменик културе), number SK 10 in Serbia's central register, entered 16 June 1981 and in the Belgrade institute's own register on 22 April 1981; protected by decision number 1108 of the Art Museum in Belgrade, 2 December 1946", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The dates here are the historians' rather than the kafana's: its own site claims only to be the oldest kafana in Belgrade and to have kept its rooms for something over two hundred years. Serbia's register of immovable cultural property, kept by the institute for the protection of cultural monuments, tells the story with the state behind it. Its entry for Кафана „?“ dates the house to 1823 and says the chief merchant Naum Ičko raised it that year for Prince Miloš Obrenović, who gave it to Toma Kostić for his part in the Second Serbian Uprising; on the ground floor, it goes on, ećim Toma — Ičko's son-in-law — opened a kafana in 1826, and it was called Ećim-Tomina kafana until 1878. A new tenant, Bogosav Marjanović of Užice, renamed it Kod pastira; Ivan Pavlović, a dealer in church goods, bought the house in 1885 and in 1892 opened a shop and a kafana called Kod Saborne crkve, taking the name from the cathedral opposite. The Belgrade protopresbyter Novica Lazarević threatened him with court, on the ground that the name suited neither the Church nor the regulation of taverns, and the sign came down overnight so that it should not profane the house of God even by its name. The owner put up a large question mark while the town settled down, and Belgrade liked it well enough that it is there still. Drinking is recorded within three years of the building, which is what the grade A means here. The register gives the address in the form the street carried when the entry was written, 7 July Street 6, and the house stands at Kralja Petra 6 now. It cites N. Živković's monograph on the kafana, published by the Belgrade institute in 2008, which nobody here has read.", "sources": "https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0_%3F | https://www.znakpitanja.rs/ | https://nasledje.gov.rs/index.cfm/spomenici/pregled_spomenika?spomenik_id=46034", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kafana-znak-pitanja-belgrade/" }, { "slug": "kamiya-bar-tokyo", "name": "Kamiya Bar", "city": "Tokyo", "country": "Japan", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1880, "earliest_documented": 1912, "gap_years": 32, "building_year": 1921, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1880 is the bar's own: its website carries the line 'founded in Meiji 13, always in Asakusa', and its own chronology opens with April 1880, when Kamiya Denbei opened Mikawaya, a sake shop selling drink by the glass. Japanese Wikipedia gives the same year and adds that he was making his own quick-matured brandy — the ancestor of Denki Bran — from 1882. Retailing liquor is not serving it over a bar. The Western-style bar and the Kamiya Bar name date from 10 April 1912, and the present building from 1921; 1912 is therefore the first record of bar use. Trading in 2026 has not been re-verified.", "sources": "https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/神谷バー | https://www.gltjp.com/en/directory/item/14486/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kamiya-bar-tokyo/" }, { "slug": "kellys-cellars-belfast", "name": "Kelly's Cellars", "city": "Belfast", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1720, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade B2 (Northern Ireland), HB26/50/101, recorded at 30-32 Bank Street in public house use", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is painted on the front of the pub: the fascia reads Teach Uí Cheallaigh — Kelly's Cellars, Estd. 1720, and a photograph of Bank Street shows it. The pub has no website we could find. Tourism NI repeats the 1720 build date without a cited record. An Ulster History Circle blue plaque marks meetings of the United Irishmen here in 1791-98, which supports 18th-century use. The register now supplies a date of its own. Northern Ireland's listed buildings dataset, searched across Belfast city centre on 17 September 2026, holds the house as HB26/50/101 at 30-32 Bank Street, grade B2, in public house use then and now, and dates its construction to between 1780 and 1799. That is sixty years after the year on the fascia, so the 1720 remains tradition and the walls a reader stands inside are later Georgian.", "sources": "https://discovernorthernireland.com/listing/kellys-cellars/68229101/ | https://boozingabroad.com/oldest-and-best-belfast-pubs-ireland/ | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Listed_Buildings_Centroid/FeatureServer/0/query?where=HB_Ref_No%3D%27HB26%2F50%2F101%27&outFields=HB_Ref_No%2CAddress%2CCurrentGra%2CDate_Const%2CCurrentUse%2CFormerUse&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/59718", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kellys-cellars-belfast/" }, { "slug": "kindli-zurich", "name": "Kindli", "city": "Zürich", "country": "Switzerland", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1474, "earliest_documented": 1409, "gap_years": -65, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected as a cultural property in the city of Zürich", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Wine was sold here from 1409, but not without a break: the inn became a private dwelling in 1618 and the tavern right was taken up again only in 1876, so the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A boutique hotel with a restaurant of classic cooking; the dining room stays open for hours after the kitchen closes.", "evidence_notes": "German Wikipedia's account of the house, which follows the Zurich art monuments volumes and a 2019 book written about it, records a drinking room here from 1357 on the authority of the nineteenth-century Zurich pastor Salomon Vögelin, and a firmer date in 1409, when the landlord Heinrich Hagnauer sold wine in the house called ze dem Kind. The house itself claims 1474, the Whitsun week when the Halle pilgrim Hans von Waltheym lodged here and wrote up the inn and its host Albrecht Moser in what is counted among the earliest printed descriptions of a Swiss inn. The drinking did not go on unbroken, and a second publisher now shows the gap rather than asserting it. Paul Leemann-van Elck's study of printing and the book trade in the canton of Zurich, published in the transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich for 1950–55 and read through the ETH library's journal archive, follows the house at Pfalzgasse 1 through the years the tavern right was lying idle: the Lindinner printing works passed to a Zurich firm in the Kindli in 1725, a bookseller moved his shop into the house in 1774, Lahr's bookshop left it in 1798 and another was carried in in 1805 and out again in 1809. Leemann-van Elck names a dozen Zurich taverns in the same pages — the Goldener Leu, the Goldenes Schwert, the Storchen, the Rothaus — and never the Kindli, which he calls a house and not a tavern; a search of the archive's eleven million pages returns nothing at all for Wirtshaus zum Kindli or Gasthaus zum Kindli. In 1618 the house had passed to David Werdmüller, of one of Zurich's richest textile families, who made it a private dwelling, and the tavern right was only taken up again in 1876 by Emilie Tribelhorn. A second house of the same name is the trap here: the Haus zum Kindli at Rüdenplatz 8 is a different building with its own history, and the Swiss art-history literature about the Murer figure belongs to that one. Whether a drink alone is served is answered by the published hours rather than in words — the restaurant is open until half past eleven at night while the warm kitchen stops at nine.", "sources": "https://www.kindli.ch/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindli | https://kindli.ch/restaurant | https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=mag-001:1950:36::100", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kindli-zurich/" }, { "slug": "king-george-ii-inn-bristol", "name": "King George II Inn", "city": "Bristol", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1681, "earliest_documented": 1705, "gap_years": 24, "building_year": 1735, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Contributing property to the Bristol Historic District — a district listing, which describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1681 belongs to the Pennsylvania press, not to the inn. The Pennsylvania Independent, on 25 July 2024, has the house opening as the Ferry House in 1681 under Samuel Clift, who ran the ferry between Bristol and New Jersey, and quotes a state tourism official who says it is the oldest bar in Pennsylvania. The inn's own pages claim America's oldest inn and tavern and print no year. Wikipedia records inn use from 1705 and a rebuild after the fire of 1735; the present building is not of 1681 and the restaurant closed in 2010-11, so the claim to unbroken trade is unproven.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George_II_Inn | https://bucksco.today/2025/11/king-george-ii-inn-350/ | https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/drinking-with-ghosts-the-life-of-bristols-343-year-old-king-george-ii-inn/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/king-george-ii-inn-bristol/" }, { "slug": "klotzlikeller-bern", "name": "Klötzlikeller", "city": "Bern", "country": "Switzerland", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1635, "earliest_documented": 1632, "gap_years": -3, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant of Swiss cooking in a vaulted cellar; the house invites guests for an apéro as well as for dinner.", "evidence_notes": "The house prints 1635 over its own door; German Wikipedia's account of the Gerechtigkeitsgasse, which follows the Bern art monuments volumes and the Swiss art guide, says the cellar tavern at number 62 was founded in 1632 and is the last of the more than two hundred cellar taverns Bern once had. Three years is well inside a generation, so the founding date stands either way, but the two numbers disagree and the reader is owed both. Swiss scholarship, read through the ETH library's journal archive, is franker than either. Paul Schenk's article on old Bernese inns in the Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Heimatkunde for 1945 says the 1635 is a figure chiselled into the door surround, that the house was sold in 1652 by Hans Rudolf Zehnder of Worb to Wolfgang von Müline and stayed in that family until 1940, and that the cellar was probably already pouring the owners' own wine, tithe wine and pension wine before 1635 — probably, on his own word, with no document named. The building report in the Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte for 1942, printed when a credit of 83,000 francs was voted for the restoration, records the lintel dated 1635 on its inner face and a crossbeam in the courtyard dated 1534, and calls the Klötzlikeller the only cellar tavern left. The Berner Woche, in a two-part illustrated piece on the Klötzlikeller and Bern's cellar taverns in 1934, said the house was built in 1545. So four publishers give four dates — 1534 on a beam, 1545 for the house, 1635 on the lintel, 1632 for the tavern — and none of them cites a lease, a licence or a cellar book. That the house serves a drink alone it says itself, inviting guests for a sociable apéro as well as for dinner, and it publishes a drinks card separately from its menus; the cellar keeps serving until half past eleven at night while the kitchen's midday service ends at half past two.", "sources": "https://www.kloetzlikeller.ch/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerechtigkeitsgasse | https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=zgh-001:1945:7::120 | https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=zak-003:1942:4::95", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/klotzlikeller-bern/" }, { "slug": "knickerbocker-saloon-lafayette", "name": "Knickerbocker Saloon", "city": "Lafayette", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1835, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "No individual entry in the National Register of Historic Places. The saloon stands inside the Downtown Lafayette Historic District (National Register reference 80000067), listed on 27 November 1980 and bounded roughly by 2nd, Ferry, 6th and South Streets; that entry is for the district and describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1835 and the visits by Ulysses Grant, Mark Twain, Al Capone and Neil Armstrong are the saloon's own claims, published on its own pages with nothing behind them, and no independent record of a founding has been traced. Its own arithmetic does not hold either: the same page claims 1835 and 180 years in business, which are not the same thing. The federal register has now been searched by position: the building has no entry of its own, and 113 North 5th Street falls inside the Downtown Lafayette Historic District, listed on the National Register on 27 November 1980 and bounded roughly by 2nd, Ferry, 6th and South Streets. That is a finding about four blocks of a county seat rather than about this bar — the entry names no individual building and dates none — so nothing in it reaches 1835. What is plain is the trade, a bar rather than a dining room, open from four in the afternoon until three in the morning every day of the week.", "sources": "https://knickerbockersaloon.net/?page_id=33 | https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-knickerbocker-saloon-in-lafayette-indiana | https://knickerbockersaloon.net/ | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-86.89186%2C40.41861%2C-86.89146%2C40.41891&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CAddress%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/knickerbocker-saloon-lafayette/" }, { "slug": "kondorosi-csarda-kondoros", "name": "Kondorosi Csárda", "city": "Kondoros", "country": "Hungary", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1740, "earliest_documented": 1784, "gap_years": 44, "building_year": 1784, "building_year_source": "Hungarian monument register, törzsszám 9655, read at muemlekem.hu: baroque, built about 1784, with the drinking room's open chimney over two cellars", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument since 1984, register number 9655", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "After the Second World War the house was used as a store and then as a party office, and Hungarian Wikipedia's account has it working as a csárda again only from 1955, when the local farming co-operative took it on. Drink-led trade here is therefore not continuous from the year the house claims.", "trade_today": "A restaurant with a museum of the outlaw years in the same house; its own drinks card runs to draught beer by the glass and pálinka by the measure.", "evidence_notes": "The house dates itself about 1740, at the meeting of eight roads, and says it has been receiving guests since 1784. Hungarian Wikipedia gives the fuller account: a first house of adobe and reed in the early 1740s, builder unknown, burned by men from Gyoma in 1783 out of revenge, and a baroque csárda with a granary raised in 1784 under Baron Ferenc Domonkos Harruckern. The first mention it can point to is the military survey of 1784; Szarvas leased the csárda in 1801 and again in 1826, and it later belonged to Mátyás Vostyiár, an innkeeper, and then to Pál Bagi, a publican. So the claimed 1740s rest on local tradition with no document behind them, which is why the year is graded as tradition, and the record is forty-four years later. The Hungarian monument register, entry 2495 under törzsszám 9655, dates the standing house to about 1784 and describes its fabric down to the drinking room's open chimney over a barrel-vaulted wine cellar and a pálinka cellar across it. A drink without a meal is not in doubt: the csárda publishes a drinks card of its own, valid from 25 November 2025, with draught beer by the fifth, third and half litre, Békés pálinka at three and five centilitres and spirits by the measure. The register's condition report of February 2024 records the house in good order and in use, and the kitchen was posting weekly menus in September 2026. The town's own history adds a second account, and it is about the road rather than the house. Kondoros the municipality publishes a history of the place which follows the puszta through its eighteenth-century tenancies: Szebeni Rácz László leasing Nagy-Kondoros in 1730, the Bulgarian-born Ferenc Prentics in 1744, 450 forints paid for it in 1747, and half of it handed over in 1754 to Harruckern's serfs at Szarvas. What made Kondoros known, it says, was the csárda built beside the Csaba-to-Szarvas highway; opposite it, about 1852, a gendarme barracks went up, officially to keep an eye on the csárda as a nest of outlaws, though the town suspects the real object was the Batthyány mansion at Csákó four kilometres off, where Hungarian gentlemen gathered to hunt and course through the Bach years. When the village was refounded on 23 December 1875 under the act of 1873, the owner of what the town calls the already famous Kondoros csárda, György Reguly, was among the men who founded it, and the town says the village settled where it did because of those two buildings, the inn and the barracks. None of that dates the house. The page names no document for the 1740s and does not say when the csárda was built, so the claimed year stands where it was, as tradition; what the town's account fixes is the order of things, an inn standing and known before the town around it existed.", "sources": "https://www.muemlekem.hu/muemlek/show/2495 | https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondorosi_cs%C3%A1rda | https://kondorosicsarda.hu/index.php/rolunk | https://kondorosicsarda.hu/index.php/itallap | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/362539626 | https://www.kondoros.hu/kondoros-tortenete", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/kondorosi-csarda-kondoros/" }, { "slug": "la-piojera-santiago", "name": "La Piojera", "city": "Santiago", "country": "Chile", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1896, "earliest_documented": 1916, "gap_years": 20, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Nobody we can point to states 1896 except Spanish Wikipedia, which says the premises was already working as a bar by then. The bar's own account is different and stops short of a founding year: its website carried the line 'La Piojera, desde 1922' when it was archived on 7 December 2024, and the history page archived the next day has Carlos Benedetti Pini buying the place in 1916, the family running it ever since into a third generation, and earlier names — Santiago Antiguo, Bar Democrático — before the present one arrived in 1922, when President Arturo Alessandri walked into the rough little cantina and asked what flea-pit he had been brought to. The sign itself went up only in 1981. The live site is now an ordering page with no history on it. The Santiago press dates the house from 1896 in passing, writing of 130 years of history in 2026. Recent status not re-verified.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Piojera | https://www.cnnchile.com/pais/la-piojera-se-despide-de-santiago-negociaciones-con-mut-y-planes-de-apertura-de-un-nuevo-local-en-2026/ | https://www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/525762-la-piojera-se-expande-nuevo-local-en-mall-tras-130-anos-de-historia-29-06-2026.html | https://www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/499916-la-piojera-se-va-de-santiago-centro-nueva-sucursal-mut-dcv-pdp-24-9-2025.html | https://web.archive.org/web/20241207133324/https://www.lapiojera.cl/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20241208032937/https://www.lapiojera.cl/historia/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/la-piojera-santiago/" }, { "slug": "lafittes-blacksmith-shop-bar-new-orleans", "name": "Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar", "city": "New Orleans", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1722, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1770, "building_year_source": "Spanish colonial records", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "National Historic Landmark and NRHP (1970); Vieux Carré Historic District", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1722-32 is the bar's own: its about page, archived in December 2023, says the building was put up between 1722 and 1732 by Nicolas Touze and is reputed to be the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States. The present site loads nothing a reader can check. National Historic Landmark documentation dates the briquette-entre-poteaux building to the 1770s, and the Jean Lafitte smuggling story is undocumented. It only became a bar in the mid-1940s, as Café Lafitte, opened by Tom Caplinger — an old building but a 20th-century bar.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafitte%27s_Blacksmith_Shop | https://www.thekitchn.com/oldest-bar-in-every-state-23783472 | https://web.archive.org/web/20231230022930/http://www.lafittesblacksmithshop.com/AboutUs.html | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/70000255_text", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/lafittes-blacksmith-shop-bar-new-orleans/" }, { "slug": "le-procope-paris", "name": "Le Procope", "city": "Paris", "country": "France", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1686, "earliest_documented": 1686, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Inscribed as a historic monument, in part, 20 January 1962 (Mérimée PA00088496)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The café Procopio Cutò opened in 1686 closed its doors in 1872. The rooms were a private artists' club, then a restaurant, then in the 1920s a café called Au Grand Soleil before the old name went back over the door; English Wikipedia dates the house trading today to 1957. Drink has been sold here for most of three centuries, but not without a break, so it keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A restaurant; its coffee room opens without a booking from three to six on weekdays, with drinks priced by the glass.", "evidence_notes": "Le Procope dates itself to 1686, and so does most of what is written about it. Procopio Cutò, a Sicilian who had taken over an Armenian's lemonade stall on the rue de Tournon, moved his business that year into a former bath house on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés, fitted it with mirrors, chandeliers and marble tables, and sold coffee in porcelain cups — a drink that had been served in taverns until then. The street is named for the Comédie-Française, which opened opposite in 1689 and made the café's fortune. That is drink-led trade at the claimed date on these premises, which is what the grade A means here; no archive document has been read for it, and the year rests on published histories of the Parisian café rather than on a deed. The French press was not of one mind about it. The album of cuttings about the café that the Bibliothèque nationale de France keeps in its Arts du spectacle department, dated 1910 to 1959, carries pages that say 1686 and rather more that say 1689, one of them tying the opening to the year the Comédie-Française opened its doors opposite and another scolding a fellow writer for not knowing that the Procope was founded in 1689. The same cuttings confirm the bath house — a maison de bains on the spot in the seventeenth century, where attendants brought customers their warm bathing gowns and pressed a collation on them — and add what happened after the closure: shut and sold at auction in 1872, the café became the property of the baroness Thénard, who let it in 1893 to a cabaret-keeper named Théo Bellefonds. What the plaque on the wall claims beyond that does not stand. It says the oldest continuously working café in the world, and the original closed in 1872: the rooms were leased for a private artists' club, became a restaurant, and in the 1920s a café called Au Grand Soleil, before somebody saw what the old name was worth. English Wikipedia dates the house trading today to 1957, and it was refitted in an eighteenth-century manner in 1988 and 1989. The French register of historic monuments inscribed the premises in part on 20 January 1962, as an eighteenth-century house — younger than the café it holds. Whether you can drink here without eating is settled by the house: it says its coffee room is open from three until six, Monday to Friday, without a reservation, and it publishes a drinks list priced by the glass, from a pastis to a kir royal, beside the wine list.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Procope | https://www.procope.com/ | https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/merimee/PA00088496 | https://www.visitparisregion.com/en/the-procope | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2386622236 | https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t5752835k", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/le-procope-paris/" }, { "slug": "lion-unicorn-thornhill", "name": "Lion & Unicorn", "city": "Thornhill", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1635, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of two hundred metres around the house on 17 September 2026 returned four entries — Blairhill, Norrieston Parish Church and churchyard, Norrieston House and Heatherlea — and nothing for the Lion & Unicorn", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1635 is the inn's own, and CAMRA's Forth Valley branch repeats it as a date for a coaching inn without adding a record; the inn's own page on the history of Thornhill offers nothing to support it. The national designations have now been searched around the house and the absence is established rather than assumed: within two hundred metres they hold Blairhill, Norrieston Parish Church and churchyard, Norrieston House and Heatherlea, and no entry for the inn, so nothing official dates these walls. What can be said about the house today is that the bar is a real one: the branch describes a separate public bar with a large games annexe and three open fires, and the food is served in the lounge and restaurant rather than in the bar.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/lion-unicorn-thornhill-168459 | https://www.lion-unicorn.co.uk/ | https://www.lion-unicorn.co.uk/local-area/thornhill-history/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/27817 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB8139", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/lion-unicorn-thornhill/" }, { "slug": "long-bar-singapore", "name": "Long Bar", "city": "Singapore", "country": "Singapore", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1915, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within Raffles Hotel, declared a national monument of Singapore in 1987", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The room that pours today is not the bar the 1915 belongs to. The hotel puts the old Long Bar along Cad's Alley, and the present two-storey bar was built in the Raffles Arcade when the hotel reopened from restoration on 16 September 1991.", "trade_today": "A bar on the upper level of the Raffles Arcade, open to walk-ins only, with no booking taken and peanut shells on the floor.", "evidence_notes": "Raffles dates the Singapore Sling to 1915 and to this bar: the hotel's account is that the barman Ngiam Tong Boon mixed gin, pineapple and lime juice, curaçao and Bénédictine with grenadine and cherry liqueur into a drink pink enough to pass for fruit juice, at a time when a woman could not be seen drinking in public. No dated document supports the year, and no drinks list of the period is known to survive. The bar itself has moved more than once. The hotel places the Long Bar of the planters' era along Cad's Alley, with its tables facing Bras Basah Road, and English Wikipedia records that the bar was relocated from the hotel lobby to the adjoining new shopping arcade in the renovation that closed the hotel in 1989 and reopened it on 16 September 1991. So the room that pours today is not the room the date belongs to, which is why this house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking. What it plainly is, is a bar: the hotel's own page says the Long Bar is open to walk-ins only, from eleven in the morning until half past ten or half past eleven at night, and the peanut shells still go on the floor, a habit it traces to the rubber and plantation men who gathered there at weekends in the 1900s.", "sources": "https://www.raffles.com/singapore/dining/long-bar/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffles_Hotel | https://www.raffles.com/singapore/about/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1766486405 | https://www.roots.gov.sg/places/places-landing/Places/national-monuments/raffles-hotel", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/long-bar-singapore/" }, { "slug": "longfellows-wayside-inn-sudbury", "name": "Longfellow's Wayside Inn", "city": "Sudbury", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1716, "earliest_documented": 1716, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Wayside Inn Historic District, entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 23 April 1973 (ref. 73000307); Massachusetts Historic Landmark", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The National Register nomination is the record behind the claim: Samuel Howe, a carpenter, is believed to have begun the inn about 1700 with two rooms, a taproom below and a guest chamber above, and his son David was granted a licence for innkeeping by the Concord Court in 1716, keeping Howe's Tavern until 1746. Ezekial Howe, landlord from 1746, renamed it the Red Horse and led two companies of Sudbury militia to Concord on 19 April 1775. Lyman Howe, the fifth of the family to keep it, was Longfellow's model for the landlord; after Tales of a Wayside Inn appeared in 1863 the Red Horse took the poem's name. The house then declined under heirs and tenants until Henry Ford bought it in 1923. It was not an inn between 1861 and 1897, and it was gutted by fire in December 1955 and reconstructed, so the standing fabric is largely later than the story.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wayside_Inn_(Sudbury) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayside_Inn_Historic_District | https://www.wayside.org/ | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/73000307_text | https://archive.org/details/massachusettsgui00federich", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/longfellows-wayside-inn-sudbury/" }, { "slug": "lord-nelson-brewery-hotel-sydney", "name": "Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel", "city": "Sydney", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1841, "earliest_documented": 1841, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1836, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New South Wales State Heritage Register 00509, listed 2 April 1999", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The land came from a Crown grant to the plasterer William Wells dated 14 May 1836 and part of a grant in trust to Richard Driver of 30 November 1840; Wells is believed to have lived here until 1842, when the liquor licence was granted. The State Heritage Register calls the Lord Nelson the oldest working licensed hotel in the city and dates it from that licence of June 1842, while the pub dates its own licence to 1 May 1841. Either way it has traded in its original sandstone ever since, and a brewery was added in 1986. Two more things the register records: the house was one of only two hotels in Millers Point kept by the Sydney Harbour Trust when the area was resumed during the plague of 1900, and it is one of three hotel buildings in the city in the Old Colonial Regency style. The pub's own year is not only its own. The Dictionary of Sydney, the city's scholarly reference work, archived in 2021, enters the house as a three-storey sandstone hotel in Colonial Regency style at 19 Kent Street, gives its construction as 1836 to 1840, describes it as thought to have been built as Wells's home on the land granted to him in 1836, and calls it one of the oldest licensed hotels in the city and one of the few houses in Millers Point kept when the quarter was demolished after the plague of 1900. The Dictionary also records the green plaque fixed here between 1984 and 1988 in the Sydney Green Plaques project for the Bicentenary, put up by the Royal Australian Historical Society with the Rural Bank of New South Wales and the City of Sydney: its wording has the hotel first licensed in 1841 under William Wells, a former convict, and says the building is believed to be the oldest hotel building surviving in Sydney. So 1841 is carried by two publishers besides the pub, and 1842 by the register; the disagreement is a year in the paperwork of a single licence and not a dispute about the house.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Nelson_Hotel,_Millers_Point | https://lordnelsonbrewery.com/history | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045112 | https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/lord_nelson_hotel | https://dictionaryofsydney.org/artefact/royal_australian_historical_society_green_plaque_41_lord_nelson_hotel", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/lord-nelson-brewery-hotel-sydney/" }, { "slug": "los-36-billares-buenos-aires", "name": "Los 36 Billares", "city": "Buenos Aires", "country": "Argentina", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1894, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1914, "building_year_source": "https://turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/es/gastronomico/36-billares", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Bar notable of the City of Buenos Aires, the protection created by city Law 35 of 1998; the parcel at Avenida de Mayo 1261/1265/1271 is catalogued in the city's register of Áreas de Protección Histórica at protection level cautelar, within area 1, San Telmo – Avenida de Mayo", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A pizzeria and billiard hall today; coffee, wine and beer are served at the counter without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The 1894 is the house's own, printed at the head of the counter menu it publishes, which calls itself a pizzeria and a bar notable and puts the opening in the year Avenida de Mayo was being cut through the old town. The city's tourism service gives the same year, and the Spanish Wikipedia article credits Horacio Spinetto's Cafes de Buenos Aires, published by the city's heritage directorate in 2008. None of the three points at a licence, a deed or a directory, so the year is a claim with a long pedigree rather than a record, and no earlier mention of drink sold on the corner was traced. The fabric is younger than the claim: the rooms are the ground floor and basement of a block put up in 1914 for the La Franco Argentina insurance company to designs by Tiphaine and Colmegna, a building that now also holds a hotel, so whatever opened in 1894 did not open in this building. What the city does certify is the present. Its register of cultural spaces lists the house as a bar in the notable category at Avenida de Mayo 1265, the protection the city legislature created by its Law 35 of 1998, and drink is served at the counter without a meal: the counter menu runs from coffee through wine by the glass and bottled beer to fernet with coke. A second city register was read on 18 September 2026 and is the first to name the house on its own entry. The planning subsecretariat publishes the whole of the city's Áreas de Protección Histórica as an open table of 48,848 parcels, and parcel 012-049-006 in Monserrat is entered as Bar los 36 billares at Avenida de Mayo 1261/1265/1271 and Avenida Rivadavia 1258/1260/1264, catalogued within area 1, San Telmo – Avenida de Mayo, at the protection level the city calls cautelar. That settles the address, which has been printed three ways — 1271 here, 1265 in the register of cultural spaces, and all of 1261, 1265 and 1271 on the one parcel. It settles no date. The entry gives no year, describes no fabric, and its protection comes from the area designation applied parcel by parcel rather than from any finding about this building: eleven parcels in this block are catalogued the same way, the Hotel Chile at 1295 among them, and so is the Teatro Avenida across the avenue. So the 1894 stands where it stood, and the oldest year any official document here fixes is still the block of 1914. The bar closed in 2013 when a pizza chain bought it and reopened on 24 September 2014 after a restoration that won a city prize the following year for work in the historic quarter.", "sources": "https://los36billares.com.ar/L36B_mostrador.pdf | https://turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/es/gastronomico/36-billares | https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_36_Billares | https://data.buenosaires.gob.ar/dataset/espacios-culturales | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2569029555 | https://data.buenosaires.gob.ar/dataset/areas-proteccion-historica | https://cdn.buenosaires.gob.ar/datosabiertos/datasets/secretaria-de-desarrollo-urbano/areas-proteccion-historica/areas-de-proteccion-historica.csv", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/los-36-billares-buenos-aires/" }, { "slug": "ma-camerons-aberdeen", "name": "Ma Cameron's", "city": "Aberdeen", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1746, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the pub in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of forty metres around 6-8 Little Belmont Street on 17 September 2026 returned three listed buildings — the former Old Town's School across the street (LB20082, category A), 2 Little Belmont Street and 11A Back Wynd (LB20125), and the former West St Nicholas parish rooms at 15 Back Wynd (LB19968) — and nothing for Ma Cameron's", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Scotland's Pubs and Bars gives 1746 and the operator says the front snug is eighteenth-century; no licence or deed has been traced. CAMRA's heritage data records the building as not listed, and the national designations have now been searched here too, which makes that an answer of our own rather than somebody else's: within forty metres of 6-8 Little Belmont Street Historic Environment Scotland holds three listed buildings — the category A former Old Town's School across the street, 2 Little Belmont Street with 11A Back Wynd, and the former West St Nicholas parish rooms at 15 Back Wynd — and no entry for the pub. So no register dates these walls, and the eighteenth-century snug rests on the operator's word. The interior carries one star on CAMRA's national inventory for two classic panelled rooms: the snug with bare bench seating, a hatch for service and two perforated bentwood seats, divided by a partition from a public bar that keeps its old fittings. When the snug was refurbished in October 2015 the structural alterations planned for it were dropped after complaints, so the historic part survives; the snug bar, now called the Whisky Bar, keeps short hours, and drinks come from the back bar when it is shut. The name is Amelia 'Ma' Cameron's, who kept the pub in the 1930s, and the house was earlier Cameron's Inn. Aberdeen City Council's sites record notes that the ground beneath an extension was excavated in 1980 and published in the city's medieval burgh volume.", "sources": "https://www.scotlandspubsandbars.co.uk/location/ma-camerons/ | https://www.belhaven.co.uk/pubs/aberdeen/ma-camerons | https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/the-oldest-pubs-in-scotland/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/ma-camerons-aberdeen-112805 | https://emuseum.aberdeencity.gov.uk/sites/12/46-little-belmont-street | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/593220 | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/HES/HES_Designations/MapServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-2.10118%2C57.14676%2C-2.09986%2C57.14748&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=DES_REF%2CDES_TITLE%2CCATEGORY&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ma-camerons-aberdeen/" }, { "slug": "macquarie-arms-hotel-windsor", "name": "Macquarie Arms Hotel", "city": "Windsor", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1815, "earliest_documented": 1815, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1815, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "New South Wales State Heritage Register 00041, listed 2 April 1999", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The State Heritage Register quotes the notice that opened the house: a large and commodious building lately completed at considerable expense in the town of Windsor for an inn, called the Macquarie Arms and kept by Thomas Ranson, 'who formerly was an Innkeeper in England', to open for the public on Monday 31 July 1815. Hawkesbury People & Places, a local history site for the district, cites the same notice from the Sydney Gazette of 15 July 1815, which dates the announcement a fortnight before the opening, and names Ranson as the innkeeper. Governor Macquarie's diary records the condition he attached to the land: the emancipist Richard Fitzgerald, who had arrived as a convict in 1791, was given a large allotment in the square on the express condition that he build at once a handsome commodious inn of brick or stone, at least two storeys high. The Hawkesbury site has Fitzgerald arriving on the William and Ann in 1791, holding government posts including superintendent of convicts and works at Windsor, and building a cottage for his family next door, and it describes the house as two-storeyed brick with a cellar and attic rooms, much of its cedar joinery, its staircases and its colonial fanlights still in place. The building has survived and the trade has not. Army officers stationed at Windsor took it over in the late 1830s and it was the Mess House on Armstrong's map of 1842; the Hawkesbury site has it as a private home from 1840 to 1872, then the Bushell family running it as the Royal Hotel from 1872 to 1900, and it prints an advertisement from the Windsor and Richmond Gazette of 31 August 1901 for Bloome's Royal Hotel, Windsor, which carries the licensed trade past 1900 under a landlord neither publisher had named. It has been a hotel since. It is also known as the Royal Hotel. On the garden wall facing the square is a plaque marking the flood of 1867 at 19.3 metres, on brickwork thought to be made of bricks rejected from St Matthew's church in 1817.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Arms_Hotel | https://timegents.com/2017/01/23/macquarie-arms-hotel-windsor/ | https://macquariearms.com.au/ | https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/oldest-pubs-in-australia/ | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045146 | https://www.hawkesbury.org/name/macquarie-arms-hotel.html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/macquarie-arms-hotel-windsor/" }, { "slug": "mcgillins-olde-ale-house-philadelphia", "name": "McGillin's Olde Ale House", "city": "Philadelphia", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "alehouse", "claimed_founded": 1860, "earliest_documented": 1871, "gap_years": 11, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in the National Register of Historic Places or on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, and it stands in no local historic district. Searches around 1310 Drury Street on 17 September 2026 returned seven federal entries within two hundred metres — among them the Land Title Building, the Witherspoon Building and the St James Hotel — and six city designations within sixty metres, all on Chestnut Street, Market Street or South Broad Street, with nothing for Drury Street in either register", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Opened in 1860 by William 'Pa' McGillin as the Bell in Hand, per Wikipedia and the bar; its framed liquor licences on the wall run from 1871, and no 1860 primary record has been read. Both registers have now been searched, and neither holds the house. Within two hundred metres of 1310 Drury Street the National Register of Historic Places lists seven buildings — the Land Title Building on Chestnut Street, the Witherspoon Building on Walnut, the St James Hotel, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the Bellevue Stratford, the Union League and the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust — and the alley itself carries nothing; Philadelphia's own register holds six designations within sixty metres, on Chestnut Street, Market Street and South Broad Street, none of them on Drury Street, and the property lies in no local historic district. So the oldest-looking bar on the block is the one building near City Hall with no designation of any kind, no register dates its walls, and the 1860 rests on the bar's own account with the licences from 1871 behind it. The next thing to look for is a city directory or a licence return, not a designation.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGillin%27s_Olde_Ale_House | https://www.mcgillins.com/ | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-75.16491%2C39.94840%2C-75.16025%2C39.95200&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CAddress&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://services.arcgis.com/fLeGjb7u4uXqeF9q/ArcGIS/rest/services/Historic_sites_PhilReg/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-75.16328%2C39.94966%2C-75.16188%2C39.95074&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=loc%2Cidesigdate1%2Cdistrict&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://atlas.phila.gov/1310-14%20DRURY%20ST/licenses", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/mcgillins-olde-ale-house-philadelphia/" }, { "slug": "mchughs-bar-belfast", "name": "McHugh's Bar", "city": "Belfast", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1711, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1710, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1711 is the figure the travel press uses — IrishCentral calls it the oldest pub in the oldest building in Belfast and dates it from 1711 — and the bar publishes nothing of its own that we could find. A 1997 survey by F. W. Hammond reportedly confirmed a build date of about 1710-15, making it Belfast's oldest known building. When it first became a pub is not established. Current trading status was not confirmed.", "sources": "https://www.oldest.org/entertainment/irish-pubs/ | https://www.irishcentral.com/travel/ireland-oldest-charming-pubs | https://boozingabroad.com/oldest-and-best-belfast-pubs-ireland/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/mchughs-belfast-117613 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1230508", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/mchughs-bar-belfast/" }, { "slug": "mcsorleys-old-ale-house-new-york-city", "name": "McSorley's Old Ale House", "city": "New York City", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "alehouse", "claimed_founded": 1854, "earliest_documented": 1862, "gap_years": 8, "building_year": 1858, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, designated 2012 (New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historians note the site was a vacant lot in 1860-61, the building dates from no earlier than 1858, and John McSorley first appears in city directories in 1862. It likely opened 1861-62, not 1854, though it has traded ever since, serving 'near beer' in Prohibition. The city's own record now says much the same. New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission building database, read on 17 September 2026, gives 15 East 7th Street as a brick tenement of about 1865 built for John Wroughton Mitchell, altered since, standing in the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, and its note records the 1854 founding date as what the house is thought to have rather than what is established, adding that the business was first called The Old House at Home. Two independent lines of dating therefore land within a few years of each other and a decade after the year over the door.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McSorley%27s_Old_Ale_House | https://mcsorleysoldalehouse.nyc/ | https://data.ny.gov/resource/9s3h-dpkz.json | https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/gpmc-yuvp.json?des_addres=15%20East%207th%20Street", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/mcsorleys-old-ale-house-new-york-city/" }, { "slug": "merrijig-inn-port-fairy", "name": "Merrijig Inn", "city": "Port Fairy", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1845, "earliest_documented": 1847, "gap_years": 2, "building_year": 1845, "building_year_source": "https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/4060/download-report", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Victorian Heritage Register H0248, and in the Port Fairy historic area", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Drink-led use here is not continuous from 1845. The hotel closed in 1852, the government took the lease in 1853 for police barracks, offices and courts, and the house was afterwards a boarding house and then three separate properties; the Victorian Heritage Register says it was renovated and reopened as a small private hotel in the 1980s and names no year.", "trade_today": "A restaurant with four rooms; the front bar opens at three, before the kitchen, and pours wine, beer and spirits without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The Victorian Heritage Register entry for the house, H0248, does two things worth separating. It dates the fabric: William Middleton executed a lease with James Atkinson for the corner of Campbell and Gipps Streets in September 1845 and apparently began building the inn then, and it was named the Royal Merrijig to tell it apart from an earlier Merrijig Inn that Archibald McNeill had built nearer the Moyne River before the town allotments were set out — so publishers who date this house to McNeill's licence of 1842 are dating a different building, and the site of that one is registered separately. And it records the trade: the Royal Merrijig was certainly in operation by 1847, in 1848 James Burns of the Steam Packet Hotel in Launceston advertised alterations for the comfort of gentlemen and families and a billiard table bought at considerable expense, and the house opposite the jetty became the headquarters of the coastal whalers and later of the merchant William Rutledge. Fire nearly destroyed it in 1850, the furniture was sold off and the hotel closed in 1852, and from 1853 the government leased it for police barracks and offices, with courts sitting until 1860 and the Belfast road board and municipality in it after that. It was a boarding house under Captain Frederick Trouten, then sold in three parts in 1901, and only in the 1980s was it renovated and reopened as a small private hotel. A second publisher now dates the fabric too, and not to the same year: Victorian Places, the gazetteer of the state's settlements produced by Monash University with the University of Queensland, says in its account of Port Fairy that parts of the Caledonian and the Merrijig hotels date from 1844 or possibly earlier. That is a year or more before the lease the register works from, which would make the standing house older than its own claim rather than younger, and no document is cited either way, so the page keeps the register's 1845 and says that the earlier reading exists. The same account confirms the setting the register describes: James Atkinson's private survey of eight square miles east of the river in 1843, his township survey of 1846, the town named Belfast, and the Belfast Road District proclaimed on 29 June 1853, the first municipal body in Victoria outside Melbourne and Geelong — the body the register has meeting in this building. Anyone may drink there now: the front and garden bars open from three in the afternoon until six, two hours before the kitchen does, and pour wine by the glass, beer, spirits and cocktails with bar snacks.", "sources": "https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/4060/download-report | https://www.merrijiginn.com/our-story | https://www.merrijiginn.com/drink | https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/oldest-pubs-in-australia/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/597178567 | https://www.victorianplaces.com.au/port-fairy", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/merrijig-inn-port-fairy/" }, { "slug": "middleton-tavern-annapolis", "name": "Middleton Tavern", "city": "Annapolis", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1750, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties AA-1817, under a deed of easement with an architectural covenant held by the State of Maryland since 1971; within the Colonial Annapolis Historic District, a National Historic Landmark", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: a store and dwelling from 1793, a hotel in the 1860s, shops from the 1870s and a restaurant by 1939; Middleton Tavern opened in 1968", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Maryland Historical Trust's survey file for the property dates it to about 1754, built as a tavern and boarding house on the Ship Carpenters Lot that Governor Francis Nicholson set aside about 1696 for shipwrights, and known first as the Inn for Seafaring Men. The Middletons' fifty-year tenure was reported often in the Maryland Gazette, and George Mann ran the house through much of the Revolution, lodging Washington and Jefferson. What follows is why the tradition of unbroken trade does not hold. John Randall bought the property in 1793, possibly having run the tavern since 1786, and converted it to his store and dwelling; it was the Marx Hotel under Frederick Marx in the mid-1860s and under the Baltimore brewer George Rost; from the mid-1870s Thomas Tydings made it two shops with living space above and tenements along Randall Street; by 1939 it was the Mandris Restaurant. Jerry and Bo Hardesty leased it from Cleo and Mary Apostol in 1968 and opened Middleton Tavern, naming it for Horatio Samuel Middleton. Two fires in the early 1970s did severe damage, and the exterior has been restored to its mid-eighteenth-century look.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleton_Tavern | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=6383 | https://middletontavern.com/annapolis-downtown-middleton-tavern-about | https://savingplaces.org/stories/historic-bars-middleton-tavern-in-annapolis-maryland | https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/medusa/PDF/AnneArundel/AA-1817.pdf | https://archive.org/details/theancientcityhi00riley", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/middleton-tavern-annapolis/" }, { "slug": "mitre-tavern-melbourne", "name": "Mitre Tavern", "city": "Melbourne", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1868, "earliest_documented": 1868, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Victorian Heritage Register H0464; also classified by the National Trust of Australia (Victoria)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Victorian Heritage Register says the building probably dates back to before 1850 but was not established as the Mitre Tavern until 1867, when the first publican was Henry Thompson; the trade press has a publican's licence granted on 3 April 1868 for an existing house in Bank Place, so the two accounts differ by a year and the page carries both. Rate books of the 1870s give the house fourteen to sixteen rooms, eighteen by 1895. The popular 1837 is the year Charles Ebden bought the land, not a date for the building. Much of what a drinker sees is later: the faintly medieval exterior with its shutters, Marseille tiles and half-timbered gables is early twentieth century, internal changes followed the Licensing Act — the 1889 Act required a separate entrance for off-premises trade, six rooms for public accommodation and a meal room — and in 1971 most of the interior was taken out and replaced. In the early twentieth century the tavern was the favourite meeting place of the T Square Club, an informal group of architects and artists.", "sources": "https://timegents.com/2021/01/29/melbournes-historic-mitre-tavern-has-served-up-beer-for-over-160-years/ | https://www.mitretavern.com.au/tavern/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Place | https://drinkinghistorytours.com/melbournes-best-bars/melbourne-best-old-pubs/ | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/696/download-report", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/mitre-tavern-melbourne/" }, { "slug": "moulin-de-lecq-greve-de-lecq", "name": "Moulin de Lecq", "city": "Grève de Lecq", "country": "Jersey", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1100, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building OU0093 (Government of Jersey), held in Jersey's Historic Environment Record as 0900093", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: a working mill until 1929, with no record of drink sold here before that", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Jersey's Historic Environment Record, read on 17 September 2026, is the first dating of this building from anybody but the house and the island's tourism service, and it does not support the twelfth century. The record — Government of Jersey listed building OU0093, held as heritage asset 0900093 in the parish of St Ouen — calls the house a very important survival of an early water mill, gives it phases of development with fifteenth-century origins, places it in the medieval period and notes it on the Richmond Map of 1795. It describes a mill house of two storeys and three bays in random stone with a modern wing to the west, the wheel surviving outside along with leat steps made from old grinding stones, and part of the drive machinery visible inside. Visit Jersey and the house give the twelfth century; the island's own record gives the fifteenth, so the claim is contradicted rather than documented and the grade is C. The record's reading list includes Ahier and Ashworth's Historical Hotels and Inns of Jersey of 1979, which has not been read here. Nobody we can read records drink sold on the premises before the mill stopped working in 1929, so the drinking is later than the building whichever date is right. German forces requisitioned the wheel during the Occupation to power searchlights. CAMRA's Channel Islands branch carries it as a free house in the Good Beer Guide with its own Jersey-brewed pale ale.", "sources": "https://moulindelecq.co.uk/ | https://www.jersey.com/inspire-me/inspiration/historic-pubs-in-jersey/ | https://channelislands.camra.org.uk/pubguide | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/moulin-de-lecq-st-ouen-174673 | https://moulindelecq.co.uk/about-us/ | https://her.jerseyheritage.org/report/fc5c6e00-149c-0138-c575-740f24312a1c", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/moulin-de-lecq-greve-de-lecq/" }, { "slug": "moulin-inn-moulin", "name": "Moulin Inn", "city": "Moulin", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1695, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category C listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB39862), added 5 October 1971, with the record's supplementary information updated on 20 December 2000", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's current page says only that it has served locals for over three centuries; the 1695 is widely quoted elsewhere. Historic Environment Scotland's record, read on 17 September 2026, is the first outside reading of the building this page has carried. It lists the Moulin Hotel at category C, added on 5 October 1971 and revised in December 2000, and dates the oldest part — the block to the north-east, in the advanced gabled bay — to the early 18th century, remodelled later, with the angled entrance bay and the bays to the south added after 1861, an extension by the Pitlochry architect John S H Brander in 1936 and a south wing in 1971. It records the painted date 1695 and the words MOULIN INN on the rusticated porch, which is where the number in circulation comes from, and adds that trials were once held in an old meeting room above the bar. So the year is painted on the house rather than documented, and the register reads the fabric as a generation younger.", "sources": "https://www.moulinhotel.co.uk/inn/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/moulin-inn-moulin-138501 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB39862 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1953177", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/moulin-inn-moulin/" }, { "slug": "moutere-inn-upper-moutere", "name": "Moutere Inn", "city": "Upper Moutere", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1850, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1850, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Wikipedia and RNZ give 1850 for the building, which Cordt Bensemann put up as a house (RNZ). The claim is 'oldest pub in NZ in its original building', conceding that older licences exist elsewhere in rebuilt or moved premises. The date licensed drinking began is unconfirmed.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moutere_Inn | https://www.moutereinn.co.nz/ | https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018660891/new-zealand-s-finest-historic-pubs | https://www.nelsontasman.nz/eat-drink/the-moutere-inn/ | https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/how-nzs-oldest-pub-was-saved-from-the-scrapheap-beer-fans-shelve-retirement-to-buy-historic-inn-49312 | https://www.themoutere.co.nz/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/moutere-inn-upper-moutere/" }, { "slug": "nindigully-pub-nindigully", "name": "Nindigully Pub", "city": "Nindigully", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1864, "earliest_documented": 1864, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The State Library of Queensland, using the Queensland Hotels and Publicans' Index 1843-1900 and Trove newspapers, records a certificate granted to Thomas Bradford in 1864 for the Nindigully Hotel: a publican's licence at the claimed date. The shearers'-quarters origin is repeated there without a citation. The house traded as the Traveller's Rest from 1876 and the Sportsman's Arms from 1880, its licence was cancelled in 1903, and the present hotel is the seventeen-room building Mary Ann Haines opened in April 1911, so neither 'original condition' nor continuous licensing holds. The break and the rebuilding can now be followed in the gazette. The same library's index of licensed victuallers, which transcribes the licence lists printed in the Queensland Government Gazette between July 1900 and July 1914 and cites each by volume, number, date and page, has John Sparks holding the licence of the Sportsmans Arms Hotel in the St George district in the list gazetted on 22 January 1903, for the half-year from 1 July to 31 December 1902, and again in the list gazetted on 28 January 1904, for the half-year from 1 July to 31 December 1903. Nothing at Nindigully follows for seven years. Then Mary Ann Haines appears with the Grand Hotel at Nindigully, in the list gazetted on 14 September 1911 for the licence year ending 30 June 1912, and in four more lists to the one gazetted on 5 November 1913, the last of them a renewal for the quarter to 30 September 1913. Earlier entries put Sparks in the district without naming his house: a licence transferred to him from Robert Edward Brumpton in the gazette of 9 February 1901, and on one page of 8 November 1902 both a transfer to him from Robert James Campbell — the Sportsmans Arms licensee in the 1901 and 1902 lists — and a transfer from him to George Power. Read it with two cautions. The index gives the licence district and not the locality, so the Sportsmans Arms entries are tied to this house by name and district and not by an address, while the Grand entries name Nindigully outright. And the index runs only from July 1900 to July 1914, so it has nothing to say about 1864 or about the years after the First World War.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nindigully_Pub | https://www.nindigullypub.com.au/ | https://escapeandexplore.com.au/eat-drink/queenslands-oldest-pub/ | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-28/historic-pubs-queensland-drought-floods-lockdown-struggles/101079926 | https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/many-lives-nindigully-pub | https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/state-library-of-queensland-licensed-victuallers-index", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/nindigully-pub-nindigully/" }, { "slug": "old-absinthe-house-new-orleans", "name": "Old Absinthe House", "city": "New Orleans", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1806, "earliest_documented": 1869, "gap_years": 63, "building_year": 1798, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within the Vieux Carré Historic District, a National Historic Landmark district — a district designation, which describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Nothing states 1807, the year this row used to claim. The bar's own page, on its operator's site, says the building was built in 1806 and calls the house one of the city's prominent historical landmarks; New Orleans Historical puts the stuccoed corner building at about 1806 and among the oldest structures in New Orleans. Neither dates drink. The ground floor began as a grocery, Wikipedia has a bar there by about the 1830s, and the house was advertising as the Absinthe House by 1869, which is the first record of the trade. The 1815 meeting of Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte upstairs is legend, as a court noted in 1951 when a rival on Chartres Street sued over the right to display the plaque.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House | https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/619 | https://www.ruebourbon.com/old-absinthe-house | https://data.nola.gov/resource/iqay-p646.json?streetnumber=240&streetname=BOURBON", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-absinthe-house-new-orleans/" }, { "slug": "old-bear-cork", "name": "Old Bear", "city": "Cork", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1698, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The bar's own site says Cork's oldest since 1698, and Yay Cork reported the same year as the widely held local belief when the pub reopened in 2024. No record of 1698 has been traced, and nothing has been established about the age of the building. One thing the 2024 reopening did settle, through a local historian the new owners consulted: the first name over the door was the Old Bear, not The Gateway, which is what the pub was called for most of living memory. It traded briefly as Barbarella before Ernest Horgan's team restored the older name and reopened on 31 May 2024. The licence that followed the reopening is on the public record: Revenue's register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence at 125 Barrack Street, Cork, under reference CXP617, held by Press Down Entertainment Limited and trading as Old Bear, with Raymond Ernest Horgan as its nominee — the publican the reopening reports name.", "sources": "https://www.oldbear.ie/ | https://www.yaycork.ie/corks-oldest-pub-has-a-new-name-old-bear-is-eyeing-up-a-june-opening-on-barrack-street/ | https://www.yaycork.ie/new-pub-old-bear-opens-this-friday-and-heres-a-surprise-fact-about-the-name/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-bear-cork/" }, { "slug": "old-canberra-inn-canberra", "name": "Old Canberra Inn", "city": "Canberra", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1857, "earliest_documented": 1876, "gap_years": 19, "building_year": 1857, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1857 is the date the travel press and Wikipedia give for the slab hut Joseph Shumack built, not for an inn: Australian Traveller has it beginning as a home for Irish immigrants in 1857 and becoming a coach stop serving beer and food by 1876, which is when it was licensed. It then passed to the Read family as a private home, The Pines, from 1887 until the Commonwealth bought it in 1974 and restored it as an inn, so pub use is far from continuous.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Canberra_Inn | https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/oldest-pubs-in-australia/ | https://www.oldcanberrainn.com.au/ | https://canberrabluessociety.com.au/Gig-Guide", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-canberra-inn-canberra/" }, { "slug": "old-george-inn-newcastle-upon-tyne", "name": "Old George Inn", "city": "Newcastle upon Tyne", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1582, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1024823), first listed 5 September 1977 as The Old George Public House, Old George Yard, with group value — the entry's own reference line carries the date as 6/9/77", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England lists the house grade II as early seventeenth century or earlier, much altered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth — a bracket that would take in the 1582 the pub and CAMRA both give, without documenting it. No licence or deed has been traced, so the year is still somebody's assertion rather than a record. The full list entry was read on 17 September 2026 and adds the part of the building a drinker stands in: the bar at the east end has stout, shallow joists that the register calls probably original, where the main rooms on both floors have close-set joists it puts at possibly early eighteenth century and roofs it says were renewed in the eighteenth. The rest of the description is of a three-part rendered brick front under Welsh slate, two six-panel doors in pedimented doorcases, sashes with glazing bars of which four are tripartite, the carriage arch on stout beams over rubble walls with two segment-headed doorways, a long irregular rear elevation of large rubble stonework patched in places, one original window surround, and a large chimney breast holding a wide fireplace under a shallow segmental chamfered stone arch with rounded corners and slightly vermiculated voussoirs. Two small corrections come with the reading. The register's statutory name is The Old George Public House, not the Old George Inn this page uses, and it carries group value. And the designation date is not quite what this page had: Historic England's own field gives 5 September 1977, while the reference line inside the entry reads 6/9/77 — the field is what the register publishes as the date first listed, so that is the date shown here, with the discrepancy said rather than tidied away. The story that Charles I drank here in 1646 while the Scots held him in Newcastle, and that the chair he sat in stands in the Charles I Room, is tradition the pub tells.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-george-newcastle-upon-tyne-193137 | https://www.socialpubandkitchen.co.uk/old-george-inn-newcastle | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1024823 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/236709 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1024823", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-george-inn-newcastle-upon-tyne/" }, { "slug": "old-queens-head-sheffield", "name": "Old Queen's Head", "city": "Sheffield", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1475, "earliest_documented": 1582, "gap_years": 107, "building_year": 1475, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1862", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England dates the timber-framed house to c. 1475 and it is first recorded in a 1582 inventory. The list entry carries no superlative: it describes a house, now public house, of c1475 with 19th- and 20th-century additions, citing Pevsner's West Riding volume. Sheffield's oldest surviving domestic building is Wikipedia's phrase, sourced there to the Pevsner city guide of 2004, and the press repeats it. Pub use is much later: a pub opened in an adjacent building in 1840 and expanded into the medieval house after 1862.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Queen%27s_Head | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247088 | https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/yorkshires-historic-pubs-14-of-the-oldest-pubs-in-yorkshire-including-the-golden-fleece-in-york-and-old-queens-head-in-sheffield-3958162 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/582916", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-queens-head-sheffield/" }, { "slug": "old-ship-inn-perth", "name": "Old Ship Inn", "city": "Perth", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1665, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB39463) under the statutory address 21-31 High Street, odd numbers, which takes in the inn's own number; the description is of the tenement range and does not name the inn", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "1665 is the pub's own date, and CAMRA's Tayside branch repeats it as what the house is said to date from. No licence, deed or map entry has been traced for it. The listing has now been read rather than set aside. Historic Environment Scotland's statutory address for LB39463 is High Street 21-31, north side, odd numbers, and the inn gives its own address as 31 High Street, so the house falls inside the listed range; the record states that the statutory address is the only legal part of a listing and that a building is still listed even where its name is missing from that address. What the description dates is the range rather than the house: four storeys and an attic, stuccoed, with shops at street level, architraves to Nos 27 and 29 and piended dormers at Nos 23 and 25, dated 1774 at the gable to George Street, with monograms read as those of Elspeth Cunningham and Robert Graham. So the walls the bar occupies are a century younger than the year the house puts over its door, and 1665 stands as the pub's own.", "sources": "https://oldshipinnperth.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-ship-inn-perth-138476 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB39463 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1952907", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-ship-inn-perth/" }, { "slug": "old-talbott-tavern-bardstown", "name": "Old Talbott Tavern", "city": "Bardstown", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1779, "earliest_documented": 1800, "gap_years": 21, "building_year": 1790, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 30 October 1973 (ref. 73000822)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1779 is traditional, and the National Register nomination that lists the building says so itself: 'According to tradition, since the first guest arrived in 1779, the Tavern has never been closed', with General George Rogers Clark's use of the cellars given as local tradition and the visit of Louis Philippe in October 1797 as legend. A Kentucky state marker dates the stone portion before 1790, suggests it was probably built for Salem Academy, and puts tavern use at about 1800 under William Rose Hynes; the nomination notes that the old town map shows the site bought by a man named Hynes and that Hynes Hotel was painted on what was then the front. The house has gone by many names — Hynes House, Bardstown Hotel, Chapman's House, Shady Bower Hotel, the Newman House, Talbott Hotel, Talbott Tavern from 1885 to 1968, and Old Stone Tavern. A fire in 1998 badly damaged the roof, the upper floor and the murals.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Talbott_Tavern | https://talbotttavern.com/ | https://www.hmdb.org/results.asp?Search=Keyword&SearchFor=Talbott+Tavern | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/73000822_text | https://archive.org/details/kentuckyguidetob00federich", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/old-talbott-tavern-bardstown/" }, { "slug": "perseverance-tavern-cape-town", "name": "Perseverance Tavern", "city": "Cape Town", "country": "South Africa", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1808, "earliest_documented": 1836, "gap_years": 28, "building_year": 1808, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no listing entry. The South African Heritage Resources Agency's own site returns nothing for the tavern, for the name Perseverance or for Buitenkant Street, and its national inventory, SAHRIS, could not be reached at all when it was tried on 12 September 2026 — although the building is widely described as heritage-listed", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The founding in 1808 by Johannes Blesser comes from the Cape Town Museum by way of Wikipedia, and secondary sources put the first formal wine-and-malt licence at 1836. The building stands opposite the Iziko Rust en Vreugd and is described as heritage-listed, though no register entry has been traced. Ohlsson's Breweries, the forerunner of South African Breweries, owned the pub — until 1952 by one account and 1956 by another, and the page no longer picks between them. The bar counter is said to be made from old wine casks, the oldest vine in the country is said to have grown in the garden until the 1990s, and the tavern won the first South African Pub of the Year award in 1985, ahead of 170 others. Cecil John Rhodes is rumoured to have been a regular. It closed in the alcohol ban of July 2020 and reopened under new ownership in February 2021; Cape Town listings give its hours as noon to ten, Monday to Saturday, with food until ten.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_Tavern | https://burgerbrews.co.za/perseverance-tavern/ | https://steemit.com/steempub/@scotty777/historical-pub-the-perseverance-tavern | https://www.facebook.com/PerseveranceTavern/ | https://www.sa-venues.com/things-to-do/westerncape/perseverance-tavern/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/perseverance-tavern-cape-town/" }, { "slug": "petes-tavern-new-york-city", "name": "Pete's Tavern", "city": "New York City", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1864, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1829, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the Gramercy Park Historic District (New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission), recorded as 66 Irving Place, also known as 131 East 18th Street; we have not traced an individual landmark designation for the building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The bar claims its first official drinking licence in 1864 and a grocery-and-grog trade from 1851-52, and neither has been traced to a record. The story that O. Henry wrote 'The Gift of the Magi' in a booth here is generally treated as apocryphal. On the trade today, New York State's register of active licences carries the house under its restaurant class rather than a bar class, held by 66 Irving LLC, which is a matter of licensing rather than of what the room is: Pete's keeps a long front bar and serves at it. On the building, this page said an 1829 structure was documented, and the city's own record does not agree. New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission building database, read on 17 September 2026, holds the corner as 66 Irving Place, also known as 131 East 18th Street, named in the database as Pete's Tavern: a brick building of 1846-47 put up for C. Witscher, original use mixed commercial and residential, described as a store with apartments, standing in the Gramercy Park Historic District. Its footprint sits on the corner the tavern occupies. So the fabric predates the 1864 claim by under twenty years rather than by thirty-five, and it was built as a shop with rooms over, not as the Portman Hotel.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete%27s_Tavern | https://www.petestavern.com/ | https://data.ny.gov/resource/9s3h-dpkz.json | https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/gpmc-yuvp.json?build_nme=Pete%27s%20Tavern", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/petes-tavern-new-york-city/" }, { "slug": "piano-bar-munich-lima", "name": "Piano Bar Múnich", "city": "Lima", "country": "Peru", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1950, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "No founding year has been traced for this bar, and it does not appear to publish one. What places it is the salchipapa: Spanish Wikipedia's account of the dish, drawing on El Comercio and a Lima food blog, has it sold in the 1950s at a place called the Piano Bar Múnich, under the name Piqueo Múnich, kept by a Swiss-German couple called Hans and Helga, before it reached the streets and became one of Peru's emblematic fast foods. So the room was a bar by that decade, and the year here is the decade's first, which is why the grade is C. El Comercio reported in September 2020 that the house was refusing to shut during the pandemic and sending its salchipapas out for delivery, describing it as a place people walk into for a beer, some piano or the food; Infobae still listed it among the historic bars of the old centre in January 2025, where the beer comes in generous glasses and the piano is played live.", "sources": "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salchipapa | https://elcomercio.pe/vamos/peru/bar-munich-el-mitico-refugio-de-lima-se-resiste-a-cerrar-y-ofrece-sus-famosas-salchipapas-por-delivery-coronavirus-noticia/ | https://www.infobae.com/peru/2025/01/16/los-bares-historicos-de-lima-un-recorrido-por-los-clasicos-que-siguen-vivos-en-el-centro-historico/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/piano-bar-munich-lima/" }, { "slug": "pig-and-whistle-inn-bathurst", "name": "Pig and Whistle Inn", "city": "Bathurst", "country": "South Africa", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1832, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Provincial Heritage Site (South Africa), formerly a national monument — heritage agency site 9/2/009/0010", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "An inn with rooms and a restaurant; the public bar keeps its own hours, ten in the morning until one at night.", "evidence_notes": "The inn calls itself the oldest continuously licensed pub in South Africa, and its own history is the fullest account traced: Thomas Hartley, a blacksmith from Nottinghamshire, came out with the 1820 settlers, built a forge and a house in Bathurst in the early 1820s, and by 1832 had opened an inn beside the forge. A second and independent account disagrees with that year and with part of the story. The architectural record kept by Artefacts dates the house to 1821 and says it was meant as an inn from the start, with subscription rooms for gentlemen; it names John Jarman, chosen in September 1820 to keep an inn at Bathurst, rather than Hartley, and it disputes the widely repeated name Bathurst Arms, holding that those references belong to another house since destroyed. It also gives the earlier name Peg and Wassail. English Wikipedia dates the building to 1821 as well. No licence, deed or directory has been read behind any of these years, so the grade stays at C, and the later date is the one this page records because it is the one the house itself puts on the inn rather than on the smithy. The building is a declared provincial heritage site, proclaimed a national monument on 20 October 1989. Whether a visitor may drink without eating is not in doubt: the house advertises bar hours of ten in the morning to one at night and a whisky bar at weekends.", "sources": "https://www.pigandwhistle.co.za/index.php/history | https://www.pigandwhistle.co.za/index.php/pub | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathurst,_South_Africa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heritage_sites_in_Eastern_Cape | https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=4523", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/pig-and-whistle-inn-bathurst/" }, { "slug": "proeflokaal-wynand-fockink-amsterdam", "name": "Proeflokaal Wynand Fockink", "city": "Amsterdam", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1679, "earliest_documented": 1860, "gap_years": 181, "building_year": 1679, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Rijksmonument 4746", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A tasting room for the genevers and liqueurs distilled on the premises; drink is served over the counter without a meal.", "evidence_notes": "The 1679 record is the founding of a small distillery in the Pijlsteeg by Jan Bierman. Wynand Fockink, enrolled as a citizen of Amsterdam in 1725, took the business over around 1730. Distilling and selling bottles is not serving over a bar: the Vereniging Vrienden van de Amsterdamse Binnenstad dates the tasting room's surviving interior to 1860, which is the earliest evidence found here for drinking on the premises. The firm passed to Lucas Bols in 1954, so continuity from 1679 to today is a claim about the address rather than one business. The Dutch national monuments register, read on 17 September 2026 through the Cultural Heritage Agency's linked-data endpoint, gives Pijlsteeg 31 as Rijksmonument 4746: a house with a bell gable dated 1689, its cornice nineteenth-century, with a timber shopfront and a shop interior of the eighteenth century. The gable is ten years later than the distillery's founding year, so even the building is not quite as old as 1679, and what the register records inside it is a shop rather than a bar.", "sources": "https://wynand-fockink.nl/pages/our-location | https://wynand-fockink.nl/ | https://www.amsterdamsebinnenstad.nl/binnenstad/268/wynand-fockink.php | https://api.linkeddata.cultureelerfgoed.nl/datasets/rce/cho/services/cho/sparql", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/proeflokaal-wynand-fockink-amsterdam/" }, { "slug": "prospect-of-whitby-london", "name": "Prospect of Whitby", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1520, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1357505), first listed 29 December 1950", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic England notes that references to a 1520 foundation did not appear until the 1950s and \"may have been related to a marketing campaign rather than historical research\"; the building is of the 18th and 19th centuries. The statutory list entry itself was read on 17 September 2026 and hedges in the same direction. Entry 1357505, first listed on 29 December 1950 at grade II, describes No 57 Wapping Wall as a building whose original fabric is said to be about 1520, with the north-west front refaced in the early nineteenth century: yellow brick, three storeys and three windows, recessed sashes with glazing bars, a hooded balcony with a needled balustrade on the river side, the interior much altered but keeping some eighteenth-century dado panelling on the first floor. The entry ends by saying the house was included principally for its historic associations and as a surviving riverside inn, and it groups the pub with Pelican Stairs and the hydraulic power station. So the register carries the 1520 as something said rather than something shown, and everything it can see for itself is Georgian or later.", "sources": "https://heritagecalling.com/2025/09/25/what-is-the-oldest-historic-pub-in-london/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_of_Whitby | https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/greater-london/prospect-of-whitby | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1357505 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/43871", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/prospect-of-whitby-london/" }, { "slug": "puhoi-pub-hotel-puhoi", "name": "Puhoi Pub & Hotel", "city": "Puhoi", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1879, "earliest_documented": 1879, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Historic Place Category 2 on the New Zealand Heritage List, entry 497 (Puhoi Hotel and Stables), listed 25 November 1982", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The hotel first took a permanent liquor licence in 1879, when it was called the German Hotel, a nod to the Bohemian and German-speaking settlers of the valley; Wikipedia records the year and the north Auckland paper Local Matters names the licensee, John Schollum. The same paper adds something no other account here carried: a watering hole of a sort existed six years earlier, when an Irishman, Andrew Meaney, took a bush licence to sell liquor from a shanty here in about 1873. The name changed to the Puhoi Hotel around the First World War. The hotel and its stables are entered on the New Zealand Heritage List as a category 2 historic place, number 497, listed on 25 November 1982; the entry is a short one and carries no history or construction date, so the age of the building is still not established. The village around the pub sits in the Puhoi Historic Village Zone created in 1976. The pub opens daily, from eleven in the morning Monday to Thursday and from ten on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, at 5 Saleyards Road.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puhoi | https://www.puhoipub.com/ | https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/497/497 | https://www.localmatters.co.nz/news/last-round-for-puhoi-publican/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/puhoi-pub-hotel-puhoi/" }, { "slug": "quinten-matsijs-antwerp", "name": "Quinten Matsijs", "city": "Antwerp", "country": "Belgium", "nation": "", "type": "brown-cafe", "claimed_founded": 1565, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1565, "building_year_source": "Flanders heritage inventory 4389, 't Gulick, Moriaanstraat 17", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Inventoried architectural heritage (vastgesteld bouwkundig erfgoed) since 29 March 2019 (Flanders heritage inventory 4389, listed as 't Gulick)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A café where beer is served at the counter without a meal; Belgian dishes are on the menu too", "evidence_notes": "Flanders' heritage inventory does hold the house, under the name it traded as first: object 4389, 't Gulick, at Moriaanstraat 17 on the corner of Hoofdkerkstraat. It dates the core of the corner house to the second half of the 16th century, notes the gable stone recording that the house was called 't Gulick in the year 1565, and says the shopfront was rebuilt and the café interior fitted out to a design of 1946 by the architect Gaston De Pauw. That is a public register carrying the fabric of the claimed age, which is what a B asks for. What no source yet shows is anyone being served a drink here in the 16th century: the register files the building as a town house, and the earliest drinking use we can point at is the 20th-century café. The house's own site says it has been an inn ever since, first under the Gulick name, after the county its merchant guests came from, and it reprints a piece from the Gazet van Antwerpen of 4 November 2022 that repeats the story. Willem Elsschot, Werumeus Buning and Paul van Ostaijen drank here, and several clubs still meet weekly.", "sources": "https://www.quintenmatsijs.be/ | https://ilibrariana.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/literair-en-bibliofiel-antwerpen-wim-hazeu-en-berberg-quinten-matsijs/ | https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/4389 | https://web.archive.org/web/20190921052323/https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/4389", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/quinten-matsijs-antwerp/" }, { "slug": "rose-crown-hotel-guildford", "name": "Rose & Crown Hotel", "city": "Guildford", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1841, "earliest_documented": 1844, "gap_years": 3, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "State Register of Heritage Places, registered 7 October 1997 (Heritage Council of Western Australia place 02481); on the City of Swan heritage list from 30 August 2017; classified by the National Trust on 3 September 1984", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Western Australia's heritage record for the place says Thomas Jecks moved to Guildford in 1839 to open a general store and in 1841 extended the business to include an inn he named the Rose and Crown, its buildings grouped in a U set back from the street and used as a public meeting place, for the Town Trust and for the court, in the absence of a public hall. Its description of the fabric puts most of what stands later: the two-storey Georgian block is about the 1850s, the east wing and stables the 1880s, and only the single-storey sections at the rear are believed to be Jecks's. The cellars under the 1860s section, brick-walled with round-arched doorways, hold a well said to have supplied the hotel's own brewing; the record adds that the truth of the tunnel story could only be settled by digging under the verandah. The place went on the State Register on 7 October 1997 and is graded of exceptional significance in the municipal inventory. Behind that summary sit the Heritage Council's assessment papers, compiled by the architect John Pidgeon and dated 7 October 1997, and they cite documents where the summary asserts a year. Jecks was assigned the allotment in March 1839, applied for the freehold in August 1840 and advertised a store on it in the Perth Gazette of 11 July 1840; the first contemporary use of the name Rose and Crown the assessor could find is a notice in the same paper on 12 March 1842, which is why he allows that the main building may have gone up in 1840 and not been worked as an inn until 1841. The plainest early record is an advertisement Jecks placed in the Inquirer of 9 October 1844, headed Rose and Crown Inn, Guildford, quoting breakfast, dinner and tea in the parlour and again in the tap, stabling by the day and by the night, and goods warehoused at half rate: a house serving drink and food over a counter, and the earliest record of that trade traced here. The papers carry it forward. Jecks died in 1856 and his widow and eldest son kept the inn on; a younger son, Walter, was barman in 1879 and licensee by about 1880; the house was called an inn until the 1870s and a hotel afterwards. They also speak to the awkward fact this page has been carrying. Paul Hasluck, writing in 1927, said the house had been delicensed the year before, which is 1926; the Heritage Council's assessor writes that the licence was withdrawn in 1924 and that the place was still run as a private hotel. The two are three years apart, neither cites the licensing court, and nothing traced here records when a licence came back. What can be said of today is that the house's own licence notice names a special facility licence, number 637003531, held by Markeptra Properties, rather than a hotel licence. So the claim to be Western Australia's oldest operating hotel is a claim about trade that kept going, and not yet a claim to one unbroken licence: the interruption in the 1920s is on the record twice, and its length is not. The rest comes from the historians gathered on Freotopia, Garry Gillard's compilation of Western Australian history, which names every author it quotes. Hasluck's article on Guildford between 1827 and 1842, in the journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, makes the Rose and Crown the town's fourth inn and has Jecks open it in July 1841, a month more than the register gives, though he wrote eighty-six years after the event and cited no licence. Jennie Carter's social history of Bassendean of 1986 has Jecks building the house up into a popular one from about 1840, as the Cleikum Inn lost its place as the township's first hostelry. Rica Erickson has William Steele holding the licence in 1846, the earliest licensee traced under a name. The same page sets this house's 1841 against the Albany Hotel's claim to 1835, a year earlier than the 1836 recorded here for that house.", "sources": "https://www.rosecrown.com.au/ | https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/state-histories.html | https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/oldest-pubs-in-australia/ | https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/public/inventory/details/5e4e60fc-2a51-415f-bb46-6b604ff0a27d | https://freotopia.org/hotels/rosecrownguildford.html | https://inherit.dplh.wa.gov.au/admin/api/file/5ed592ab-6cbb-72ce-b14c-ae88e79aad8a", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/rose-crown-hotel-guildford/" }, { "slug": "salon-tenampa-mexico-city", "name": "Salón Tenampa", "city": "Mexico City", "country": "Mexico", "nation": "", "type": "cantina", "claimed_founded": 1925, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A Plaza Garibaldi cantina serving Mexican food; tequila, mezcal and beer are poured at the counter, and the mariachi are hired table by table.", "evidence_notes": "The salon and Spanish Wikipedia give 1925, founded by Juan Indalecio Hernández of Cocula, Jalisco; English Wikipedia's Plaza Garibaldi article gives 1923. Hiring of mariachi Cirilo Marmolejo by 1927 is widely recorded. Mexico City's own visitor service, read on 17 September 2026, is the first publisher here that is neither the house nor an encyclopaedia, and it settles less than it confirms: it credits the cantina with a century of history without naming a year, so the two dates still stand unreconciled and the grade stays C. What the city does supply is the present, in detail. It records the house at Plaza Garibaldi 12 in the Colonia Centro, open from two in the afternoon until two in the morning from Sunday to Wednesday and until three from Thursday to Saturday, serving blanco and reposado tequilas, mezcals, cold beer and the ponche de granada it calls the house drink — so a visitor is served across the counter and the question of drink without a meal does not arise. It also describes the room: dozens of painted murals over walls and ceiling honouring Lola Beltrán, José Alfredo Jiménez and Pedro Infante, wooden tables and equipal chairs through several halls, and no stage or amplification at all. The music is acoustic and hired by the table — mariachi, norteño trios and son jarocho groups walk in from the plaza, set up at the foot of a table and play what is asked for. No description or survey of the building itself has been found, which is why no building date is shown.", "sources": "https://tenampa.com.mx/ | https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal%C3%B3n_Tenampa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Garibaldi | https://mexicocity.cdmx.gob.mx/venues/salon-tenampa/?lang=en", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/salon-tenampa-mexico-city/" }, { "slug": "scholz-garten-austin", "name": "Scholz Garten", "city": "Austin", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1866, "earliest_documented": 1866, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1866, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Recorded Texas Historic Landmark (1967); entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 27 July 1979 (ref. 79003015)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "German immigrant August Scholz opened Scholz's Hall here in 1866, accepted by the Texas Historical Commission and NRHP. The Texas marker states the current main building replaced the original around 1900, so the business is older than the fabric.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholz_Garten | https://www.hmdb.org/results.asp?Search=Keyword&SearchFor=Scholz+Garten | https://scholzgarten.com/ | https://data.texas.gov/resource/7hf9-qc9f.json | https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/Details/5453012245", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/scholz-garten-austin/" }, { "slug": "settle-inn-stirling", "name": "Settle Inn", "city": "Stirling", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1733, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category C listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB41467), added 3 February 1978", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1733 is CAMRA's: its entry says the Settle Inn was built in 1733 and is the oldest pub in Stirling, and a Scottish round-up repeats both. There is now a second and independent reading of the same year. Historic Environment Scotland listed 91 St Mary's Wynd, the Settle Inn, at category C on 3 February 1978, and its description opens by recording the house as dated 1733 with the initials G T E G — a datestone on the building itself — then describes two storeys and an attic, four windows wide, stuccoed, with crow-stepped gables, a large Victorian canted dormer and a slated roof, and notes the ground floor as badly altered as a public house. Its statement of special interest adds that the house was formerly the Red Lion Inn. So the fabric carries the claimed year and the register records inn use without dating it, which is a grade B: the walls are of the age claimed, and the first record of drink sold in them is later.", "sources": "https://lovetovisitscotland.com/what-is-the-oldest-pub-in-scotland/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/settle-inn-stirling-168471 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/51967 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB41467", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/settle-inn-stirling/" }, { "slug": "ship-inn-irvine", "name": "Ship Inn", "city": "Irvine", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1595, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of a hundred and twenty metres around the house on 17 September 2026 returned one listed building, the Marina Inn at 122 Harbour Street (LB44667, category C), and nothing for the Ship", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "CAMRA and Wikipedia both date the drinks licence to 1754, after the 1750 cut-off for the Top 100", "trade_today": "Known for its food as much as its beer; North Ayrshire registers the premises as a restaurant or cafe.", "evidence_notes": "Two community-written accounts disagree by a year and neither cites a record. CAMRA's Ayrshire and Wigtownshire branch says the building dates from 1595 and that it has been a pub since 1754; Wikipedia's Irvine Harbour article says built 1596 and licensed as an inn since 1754. The national designations have now been searched around the house rather than left open: within a hundred and twenty metres they hold one listed building, the Marina Inn along Harbour Street, and no entry for the Ship, so no survey or listing dates this fabric and the 16th-century date rests on those two notes. It sits outside the Top 100 because the drinks licence is dated 1754, after the cut-off this site uses. North Ayrshire Council inspected the premises on 28 January 2026, which shows it operating, though the council registers it as a restaurant or cafe rather than a bar, and the pub's old web address has lapsed and now points to a gambling site, so we do not link it.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/ship-inn-irvine-115292 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Harbour | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1857848 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB44667", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ship-inn-irvine/" }, { "slug": "shipwrights-arms-hotel-hobart", "name": "Shipwrights Arms Hotel", "city": "Hobart", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1846, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1845, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1846 founding date comes from the pub's own website (its phone number even ends 1846). No independent licensing or heritage documentation confirms it.", "sources": "https://www.shipwrightsarms.com.au/ | https://www.architecture.com.au/archives/awards/shipwrights-arms-circa-morris-nunn-chua-architects | https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/liquor-and-gaming/liquor/community-information/liquor-licence-data", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/shipwrights-arms-hotel-hobart/" }, { "slug": "six-mile-pub-eatery-view-royal", "name": "Six Mile Pub & Eatery", "city": "View Royal", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1855, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Bill Parsons bought land from the Hudson's Bay Company and built the Parsons Bridge Hotel, later Six Mile House, in the mid-1850s (1855 per the pub; 1856 per Pub Magazine). It closed during Prohibition and was remodelled afterwards, so 'continuous' is overstated.", "sources": "https://www.sixmilepub.com/ | https://curiocity.com/oldest-bar-bc-six-mile-pub/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/business/liquor-regulation-licensing/liquor-licence-and-permits/licensed-establishments-in-bc", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/six-mile-pub-eatery-view-royal/" }, { "slug": "skindbuksen-copenhagen", "name": "Skindbuksen", "city": "Copenhagen", "country": "Denmark", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1728, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed (fredet) in 1964, as part of Kongens Nytorv 19 and Lille Kongensgade 4, matrikel 4 in Øster Kvarter", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant in the old tap room; it takes no table bookings for drinkers and says they may simply look in.", "evidence_notes": "The house dates itself to 1728 and says it began as the tap room of the Grand Café next door, called Café nr. 4 after the street number, and that it has held the ground floor of the building since that building went up. Danish Wikipedia's article on Lille Kongensgade records the same, adding that the nickname came from the cab drivers who waited at Kongens Nytorv in leather over-trousers, and that it became the official name in 1930. The building itself has now been read. Indenforvoldene.dk, which catalogues the properties inside the old ramparts and cites the National Museum's survey Historiske huse i det gamle København of 1972, dates Lille Kongensgade 4 to 1767 and records the property as listed in 1964; it says drink has been served on the spot since 1728 and that the place was known as Droskekælderen, the cab drivers' cellar, until 1930. So the 1728 belongs to the trade and not to the walls, which are thirty-nine years younger, and still nothing documentary has been read behind the year: this stays a C. The question this site asks of a house today is answered here in the owner's own words: tables are not reserved for drinking guests, who are told they are always welcome to look in. It opens at eleven every day but Sunday and Monday, and stays open to two on Friday and Saturday.", "sources": "https://skindbuksen.dk/historie/ | https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lille_Kongensgade_(K%C3%B8benhavn) | https://www.indenforvoldene.dk/kongens-nytorv-19-lille-kongensgade-4", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/skindbuksen-copenhagen/" }, { "slug": "spaniards-inn-london", "name": "Spaniards Inn", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1585, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1064863), designated 18 October 1949", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1585 is CAMRA's, and CAMRA hedges it: the building dates back to about 1585, it says, though possibly not originally as a pub. The pub's own website gives no date. No published document supports the year, and the inn's documented history — the Gordon Riots of 1780, the 18th-century tollhouse opposite — is from the 18th century onward.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/spaniards-inn-hampstead-158165 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaniards_Inn | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1064863 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/757141", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/spaniards-inn-london/" }, { "slug": "st-peter-stiftskulinarium-salzburg", "name": "St. Peter Stiftskulinarium", "city": "Salzburg", "country": "Austria", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 803, "earliest_documented": 1720, "gap_years": 917, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 803 dates a poem praising the abbey's cellar and its beer, not public drink-led trade on the premises. The house's own chronology has nobility, townspeople and clergy coming in from 1720 and the right to sell beer bought in 1803, so ranking it at 803 would put a monastery's wine store at the head of a list of drinking houses.", "trade_today": "A fine-dining restaurant in the abbey courtyard; its cocktail bar serves a drink without a meal from Wednesday to Sunday.", "evidence_notes": "The 803 is the oldest date any house on this site claims, and what it rests on is a poem. Alcuin of York, in Charlemagne's circle, wrote a verse — Carmen CXI in the collection Ernst Dümmler edited for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in 1881 — praising the cellar of St Peter's abbey and the beer in it. German Wikipedia cites that poem, by way of Andreas Otto Weber's study of monastic wine growing, as the earliest mention, and the house cites it as its founding year. A monastery cellar praised in a poem is not a public drinking house, and the abbey's own chronology is the best evidence of when it became one: wine was carried out of Austria under ducal protection in the thirteenth century, Abbot Wolfgang Walcher cut a rock cellar in 1517 and Abbot Chillian Pitricher a second in 1527, and carters and craftsmen were paid in a wine penny or a house draught, so that, in the house's own words, little by little a Buschenschank became a Gaststätte. The year its chronology marks for outside custom is 1720, when it says nobility, townspeople and clergy came in, and the right to sell beer was bought only in 1803, before which the fathers could pour nothing but their own wine. The Austrian press is a good deal later than any of that. The Austrian National Library's newspaper archive, searched on 12 September 2026, gives its earliest mention of the name Stiftskeller St. Peter in the Salzburger Chronik für Stadt und Land of 22 February 1867, where the members of a society who had met from nine until one gathered in the Stiftskeller for a plain meal, and its earliest of the cellar under any name in the Salzburger Zeitung of 9 July 1863, which describes an arrangement made in the St Peter cellar rooms. So the printed record of outsiders eating and drinking there begins in the 1860s, a millennium after the poem and a century and a half after the year the abbey marks. Michael Haydn lived on the floor above from 1763. Abbot Willibald Hauthaler began renovating from about 1900, the baroque hall went up in 1903, the first lease in the house's history was signed in 1992, and the name changed from Stiftskeller to Stiftskulinarium in 2017. Drink without a meal is answered by the operator: its cocktail bar in the abbey courtyard publishes hours from Wednesday to Sunday, three in the afternoon until eleven at night, and offers a casual drink after work or in the middle of a day's shopping.", "sources": "https://www.stpeter.at/die-geschichte-erleben/ | https://www.stpeter.at/cocktail-bar/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter_Stiftskeller | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2246803501 | https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=sch&datum=18670222&seite=2 | https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=sza&datum=18630709&seite=2", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/st-peter-stiftskulinarium-salzburg/" }, { "slug": "stadsbierhuys-de-waag-doesburg", "name": "Stadsbierhuys De Waag", "city": "Doesburg", "country": "Netherlands", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1478, "earliest_documented": 1478, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1478, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The weigh house came into use in 1478, and the city let it with the monopoly on selling foreign beer in Doesburg, so weighing and tapping ran together from the start: Erfgoed Gelderland, the Dutch Wikipedia entry, the town's own heritage pages and the Stichting Erfgoed Nederlandse Biercultuur database all describe it as the stadsbierhuis from its opening, with city workers taking part of their wages here in beer. The lease itself has not been published online. The Guinness recognition is a distinction, not evidence, and 't Goude Hooft in The Hague claims 1423.", "sources": "https://www.entreemagazine.nl/ondernemen/de-waag-in-doesburg-zo-blijft-de-oudste-horecazaak-van-nederland-relevant | https://www.waagdoesburg.nl/ | https://mijngelderland.nl/inhoud/verhalen/stadsbierhuys-de-waag-in-doesburg | https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waag_(Doesburg) | https://bezoek-doesburg.nl/De-Waag | https://www.nederlandsebiercultuur.nl/databank/brouwerij/4865-stadsbierhuysdewaag | https://monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl/monumenten/12999", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/stadsbierhuys-de-waag-doesburg/" }, { "slug": "stara-karczma-w-jelesni-jelesnia", "name": "Stara Karczma w Jeleśni", "city": "Jeleśnia", "country": "Poland", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1655, "earliest_documented": 1774, "gap_years": 119, "building_year": 1774, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1655 comes from the Polish travel press, which relays the tradition that King Jan II Kazimierz sheltered here while fleeing the Swedes, and notes in the same breath that the only date on the building is 1774, carved into one of the oldest ceiling beams, and that even that may record a repair rather than the build. The Silesian heritage listing reads the inn as 18th-century, possibly earlier and raised by Wallachian settlers. It is often called Poland's oldest still-operating karczma; it may originally have been a forester's lodge.", "sources": "https://stronapodrozy.pl/najstarsza-karczma-w-polsce-stoi-w-jelesni-i-zaprasza-gosci-tu-stolowano-sie-juz-250-lat-temu/ar/c7-16037937 | https://slaskie.travel/culturalheritage/2755/stara-karczma-w-jelesni | https://starakarczma.eu/aktualnosci", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/stara-karczma-w-jelesni-jelesnia/" }, { "slug": "surveyor-general-inn-berrima", "name": "Surveyor General Inn", "city": "Berrima", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1835, "earliest_documented": 1835, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1834, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn says it was built in 1834 for James Harper and licensed a year later, of local sandstone and rendered sand stock brick under a shingle roof, raised with convict labour in the new village of Berrima where Thomas Mitchell's new southern road crossed the Wingecarribee. The licence went to Harper on 29 June 1835. Its claim to be Australia's oldest continuously licensed inn is technically broken: the trade press found the licence lapsed from 30 June to 17 October 1895, over a family dispute and ceilings too low for the rules of the day, though the house has traded from the same building throughout. The inn is not on the New South Wales State Heritage Register, though four other Berrima inns are — but Heritage NSW does describe it, inside the inventory record for one of those four. The entry for the former Berrima Inn on Jellore Street, register item 00103, whose statement of significance was last revised on 15 September 2026, sets out the village's licensed houses from the local history it works from: the first inn licence in Berrima went to the emancipist Bryan McMahon on 29 July 1834 under the sign of the Berrima Inn, eleven months before Harper's; the Surveyor General was among the first houses to trade here, with the Berrima Inn and the Mail Coach; there were four licensed premises by the 1840s, the Crown being the fourth; and of the seven early hotels still standing in the village, the record names the Surveyor General as the oldest. McMahon's house is why the wording of the claim needs watching: Berrima's first licence is the older by a year, and it ran only until 1848, when the inn became the family's home. The front bar runs trivia on Tuesdays from April to October and a Monday song circle from five, with a bistro through the old stone corridors.", "sources": "https://surveyorgeneralinn.com.au/ | https://timegents.com/2023/12/24/berrimas-surveyor-general-license-lapsed-in-1895-title-to-australias-oldest-continuously-licensed-pub-challenged/ | https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/NSW/berrima/51580/surveyor-general-inn.html | https://airial.travel/attractions/australia/berrima/surveyor-general-inn-IEPBzTnn | https://apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045487", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/surveyor-general-inn-berrima/" }, { "slug": "szazeves-etterem-budapest", "name": "Százéves Étterem", "city": "Budapest", "country": "Hungary", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1831, "earliest_documented": 1831, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Protected monument, register number 15429; the 1931 fittings carry applied-art protection", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant of Hungarian cooking; its protected 1931 fittings include a carved serving counter.", "evidence_notes": "The Budapest Lexicon, summarised in Hungarian Wikipedia's account of the Péterffy palace, says tradition puts an eating house in the building in the second half of the eighteenth century and that Hasslinger's inn, At the City of Buda, certainly opened here in 1831. The Kris family held it for seventy-seven years from 1864, trading first as the White Ship and then under their own name, and the present name was taken at the centenary in 1931, when the rooms were refitted with the carved serving counter, Transylvanian stove and music box that carry applied-art protection. The house's own pages call it the oldest restaurant in Pest and date its opening as an inn to 1831. The national monument register lists the palace under number 15429, describes it as the work of András Mayerhoffer and dates it 1744, where the Budapest Lexicon has János Péterffy beginning it in 1755. Nobody publishes whether a drink is served at that counter without a meal, so the protected counter is the whole of the evidence for a yes.", "sources": "https://www.szazevesetterem.hu/ | https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9terffy-palota | https://www.muemlekem.hu/muemlek?id=582", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/szazeves-etterem-budapest/" }, { "slug": "taberna-antonio-sanchez-madrid", "name": "Taberna Antonio Sánchez", "city": "Madrid", "country": "Spain", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1787, "earliest_documented": 1787, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the City of Madrid's catalogue of protected elements, published with the 1997 revision of its General Plan — approved by the full council on 17 December 1996 and definitively by the government of the Community of Madrid on 17 April 1997, the text appearing in that region's gazette on 19 April 1997. The building is entry 04850 in the Calle del Mesón de Paredes, catalogued at the level the plan calls Parcial, with particular conditions set out in an individual record we have not read; the premises are entry 04850-01 in the catalogue's separate list of protected commercial establishments, printed as Taberna Antonio Sanchez at number 13, at Nivel 1, the first of the three levels that list uses", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A taberna kept as it was, serving Madrid cooking; the tin counter is still the bar.", "evidence_notes": "The year comes from research rather than from the house: the historian Antonio Pasies dated the tavern to 1787 in a book published in 2018, and the City of Madrid's tourism service sets out how. It says the exact founding date is not known but that the house is older than February 1787, when the Diario Curioso, Erudito, Económico y Comercial announced that the premises were being transferred as a wine business, and that the cadastral survey of Madrid made in 1749 shows the same building on the plot with the tavern's space unchanged. We have not read the notice itself, and what it records is a wine trade rather than the word taberna, so the grade rests on a dated publication about this address in the claimed year and not on a licence. Other dates circulate: an association of Madrid's old restaurants gives 1830 and a first name of Taberna de Álvaro de la Virgen, which would make the house forty-three years younger. The name it carries now arrived in 1884 with a new owner called Antonio Sánchez; accounts differ on whether he was a wine merchant from Valdepeñas or the father of the bullfighter of the same name who went behind the bar after an injury. Whether a drink can be had without a meal is not stated in words by anything traced. What is recorded is the fitting: the tin counter survives in use, wine is on the list, and the city's tourism service, Guía Repsol and the Madrid press all call the house a taberna rather than a restaurant. The city's own register was read on 18 September 2026 and it names this house. Madrid's catalogue of protected elements, published with the 1997 revision of the General Plan, carries the building as entry 04850 in the Calle del Mesón de Paredes at the level the plan calls Parcial, with conditions in a record of its own, and carries the premises separately, as entry 04850-01 in its list of protected commercial establishments, printed as Taberna Antonio Sanchez at number 13 and at Nivel 1 — the door number in the catalogue is the door number over the street. The catalogue gives no dates at all, so it neither supports the 1787 nor argues against it and the grade is unchanged; what it settles is that the fitting this note describes is protected as well as the fabric round it. The control is that the same list carries the neighbours by number in this street — a haberdasher at 6, a perfumer at 7, a chemist at 8, an electrical shop at 20, a shoemaker at 33 — so an establishment of this kind here would have been found. What is still out of reach is the notice itself: the National Library's newspaper library, which holds the Diario Curioso, Erudito, Económico y Comercial of February 1787, answers a security challenge rather than a page, and the Complutense University's digitisation of the same paper is served through a route that has been closed to this project, so nobody here has yet read the four lines the whole date rests on.", "sources": "https://www.esmadrid.com/en/restaurants/antonio-sanchez-tavern | https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taberna_de_Antonio_S%C3%A1nchez | https://www.elespanol.com/madrid/ocio/20230903/taberna-antigua-madrid-anos-lugar-reunion-toreros-intelectuales/790671074_0.html | https://www.guiarepsol.com/es/fichas/solete/la-taberna-antonio-sanchez-70097/ | https://www.restaurantescentenarios.es/historia-de-la-taberna-antonio-sanchez-un-viaje-al-pasado-de-madrid/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1191046494 | https://geoportal.madrid.es/fsdescargas/IDEAM_WBGEOPORTAL/ESTATICOS_VISORES_URBANISTICOS/PG97/TEXTOS/CATALOGO_ELEMENTOS_PROTEGIDOS.pdf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/taberna-antonio-sanchez-madrid/" }, { "slug": "the-76-house-tappan", "name": "The '76 House", "city": "Tappan", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1668, "earliest_documented": 1756, "gap_years": 88, "building_year": 1754, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NRHP (ref. 90000689); contributing property, Tappan Historic District", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1668 is not supported and does not come from the house, which claims a three-hundred-year-old structure: a land deed of 1753 and construction in 1754 are on record, and Orange County's supervisors are documented meeting 'at the House of Casparus Maybe' in 1756. Tavern use from the 1750s is well evidenced. The state licence names the house the Old 76 House, which is what the sign says, and Historic Tavern Inc as the licensee.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_%2776_House | https://76house.com/ | https://abc7ny.com/post/americas-oldest-restaurant-76-house-tappan-ny-thriving-serving-customers/18958390/ | https://data.ny.gov/resource/9s3h-dpkz.json | https://archive.org/details/historyofrocklan01gree", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-76-house-tappan/" }, { "slug": "the-black-swan-york", "name": "The Black Swan", "city": "York", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1417, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1560, "building_year_source": "York Civic Trust plaque record, which attributes the rebuilding of the house to Sir Martin Bowes in 1560, consistent with Historic England's late C16", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed — Historic England list entry 1256886, first listed 14 June 1954", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "A private house until the late eighteenth century: York Civic Trust's plaque record and CAMRA both date its use as a public house from then, so drink-led trade here begins after the 1750 line the ranking draws. Nobody has yet traced the year it changed.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub's history page says the house was built for William Bowes, a merchant and Sheriff of York, in 1417, and that he became Lord Mayor in 1428. The same page says the building dates to the fifteenth century \"when it was a private house\", and that a medieval inn is only supposed to have stood on the site before the present one. Historic England lists the building Grade II* (list entry 1256886, first listed in 1954) as a house, now public house, of late C16 date with early and late C17 extensions and C20 renovation, citing the Royal Commission's inventory of central York of 1981. York Civic Trust's plaque record attributes the rebuilding to Sir Martin Bowes in 1560, incorporating an earlier family house, and the brick additions to Sir Henry Thompson in 1670; it puts the Bowes mayoralty of 1417 on William Bowes the wool merchant, not a build date, and states plainly that the Black Swan has been a public house since the late eighteenth century. CAMRA's entry says the same in fewer words — a timber-framed house turned into a pub in the eighteenth century — and its National Inventory description credits much of the present interior, including the Ingle Bar counter, to a 1930s refit by the Tadcaster Tower brewery. So 1417 dates neither the standing fabric nor any drinking house on these premises: grade C. Drink-led use begins after 1750, which keeps the pub off the Top 100 while it keeps its page and its pin; no year has been traced for the change of use, only the fact of it. The wife-sale of 1884 the pub repeats, and the tunnel to St Cuthbert's, are told as stories and evidenced as stories.", "sources": "https://blackswanyork.com/history/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1256886 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/black-swan-york-123300 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/245494 | https://web.archive.org/web/20210120091632/https://yorkcivictrust.co.uk/heritage/civic-trust-plaques/black-swan/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/27180417", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-black-swan-york/" }, { "slug": "the-bleeding-horse-dublin", "name": "The Bleeding Horse", "city": "Dublin", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1600, "earliest_documented": 1871, "gap_years": 271, "building_year": 1871, "building_year_source": "https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50110427/bleeding-horse-24-25-camden-street-upper-charlotte-way-dublin-2-dublin", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NIAH reg. no. 50110427, rated of regional importance", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says the house goes back at least to the seventeenth century, when this was St Kevin's Port, and offers two accounts of the name: a farrier who bled horses at the inn, and a horse wounded at the Battle of Rathmines in 1649. The wording on its site is the Wikipedia article's, word for word, so those two are one source and not two. The independent record is the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, which dates the standing building 1865-1875, names Andrew Wren as the man who rebuilt it in 1871 to R.J. Stirling's designs, and says it stands on the site of an earlier inn without dating that inn. Something older was here; how much older is not established, so the earliest drinking-house date that can be cited is the purpose-built public house of 1871, and the grade is C. Sheridan Le Fanu's novel The Cock and Anchor, published in 1845, describes the Bleeding Horse as already old and hangs a painted sign outside it, which is suggestive and is not a record. The inventory also confirms the pub's account of a spell as the Falcon Inn. Read again on 18 September 2026 from the survey's own data, the record adds two things. The bar a drinker stands at is not old fabric: the timber interior is traditional in style and was reconstructed about 1992. And Camden Street was St Kevin's Port until it was renamed for Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden, in 1778, so the older name the pub reaches for is real and dates the street rather than the house. Dublin City Council's Record of Protected Structures for the development plan of 2022 to 2028 does not protect this building. The nearest entries are numbers 1 to 7 Camden Street Upper, about thirty metres off on the other side of the road, and the search was checked against a control: the council's own point for number 1 falls within half a metre of the national survey's position for the same house, so the absence is a search and not a mismatch of coordinates. A building the national survey rates of regional importance and the council's list leaves out is worth saying aloud, and it changes nothing about the age.", "sources": "https://bleedinghorse.ie/ | https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50110427/bleeding-horse-24-25-camden-street-upper-charlotte-way-dublin-2-dublin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bleeding_Horse | https://data.smartdublin.ie/dataset/f1dd00f0-5914-4b97-b66e-0dbb4bcb510c | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bleeding-horse-dublin/" }, { "slug": "the-britannia-st-peter-port", "name": "The Britannia", "city": "St Peter Port", "country": "Guernsey", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1840, "earliest_documented": 1985, "gap_years": 145, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1840 came to us from a single visitor's review of 2019, and a review is not something this site will stand a date on, so that citation has been dropped. Nothing we have been able to open states a founding year for the house. CAMRA's entry, surveyed in March 2015, describes a small locals' bar on Trinity Square and gives no date; it is absent from the branch's guide to real-ale houses because the same entry records no cask ale here, which is not a sign of closure. The Brewery History Society's list of Guernsey brewery pubs names the Britannia Inn without a year, the Liberation Group lists it among the houses it supplies without one, and the Guernsey Press archive names the bar once, in July 2020, with none either. The Priaulx Library has no article on the house and its recollections of the town do not reach Trinity Square, and the island's register of protected buildings would not load on 12 September 2026. The earliest record traced is the Brewery History Society's note that the house sold Guernsey beers between 1985 and 1990 on the authority of local CAMRA guides, which fixes it as a pub by 1985 and says nothing about how much older it is. The review also placed the house in a ranking of the island's oldest pubs, which nothing published does, and that has gone from the page with it.", "sources": "https://www.facebook.com/Britanniagsy/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/britannia-st-peter-port-174936 | https://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Guernsey_Brewery_Pubs | https://www.liberationgroup.com/partner-pubs/ | https://guernseypress.com/news/2020/07/27/fine-for-man-who-popped-to-the-pub-just-hours-after-arriving-from-the-uk", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-britannia-st-peter-port/" }, { "slug": "the-bush-inn-new-norfolk", "name": "The Bush Inn", "city": "New Norfolk", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1815, "earliest_documented": 1825, "gap_years": 10, "building_year": 1815, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Tasmanian Heritage Register (ID 1261)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Building began about 1815 and the house was finished in 1825, with the first licence granted to Ann Bridger, a widow who had arrived in Hobart two years earlier. The Derwent Valley Gazette, marking the inn's two hundredth year in October 2025, dates that licence precisely to 29 September 1825 and names Belinda Smith as the licensee now, after the lease changed hands in April 2023 when the twins Peter and Don Smith left. The same article repeats the inn's claim to have stayed open and licensed throughout, and contrasts it with Hobart's Hope and Anchor, which it says closed for long stretches. That claim is contradicted by newspaper evidence found by the trade press, which shows the Bush Inn closed and serving as a private residence between about 1874 and 1877. Both accounts are recorded here because the disagreement is the point: the year of the first licence is firm, the unbroken run is not. The inn says on its own pages that it is the oldest pub in Tasmania and the newest pub in New Norfolk, having been built in 1815 and restored since, and it opens seven days from eleven in the morning.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bush_Inn,_Tasmania | https://timegents.com/2014/11/30/the-bush-inn-tasmania/ | https://www.thebushinn.com.au/ | https://newnorfolknews.com/2023/04/one-era-ends-and-another-begins-at-the-bush-inn/ | https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/oldest-pubs-in-australia/ | https://www.tasmaniancountry.com/newspaper/derwent-valley-gazette/beloved-bush-inn-celebrates-200-years", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-bush-inn-new-norfolk/" }, { "slug": "the-castle-inn-newport", "name": "The Castle Inn", "city": "Newport", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1550, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1034581), first listed 1 October 1953", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1550 is the island's visitor board's: Visit Isle of Wight calls the Castle the oldest pub in Newport, dating back to 1550. The inn publishes nothing of its own that we could find, and the tunnel-to-Carisbrooke-Castle story is local legend. Historic England's listing has now been read: 91 High Street, the Castle Inn, was listed Grade II on 1 October 1953, and the entry records a brick plaque above the sign board over the door bearing the date 1684 and the initials R E A, two storeys of red and some grey brick in what it calls an early example of Flemish bond, an old tile roof with a saddle stone at the west gable, and a west gable wall of stone rubble with quoins breaking into the brickwork at the front. A date cut on the building itself is the firmest thing anybody has published about it, and it is 134 years later than the claim. No licensing record has been traced for either year.", "sources": "https://www.visitisleofwight.co.uk/things-to-do/the-castle-inn-p143081 | https://isleofwightattractions.com/food-drink/pubs/the-castle-inn-newport | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1034581 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1094597", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-castle-inn-newport/" }, { "slug": "the-central-ramsey", "name": "The Central", "city": "Ramsey", "country": "Isle of Man", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1797, "earliest_documented": 1889, "gap_years": 92, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Registered Building No. 176 (Isle of Man), registered 30 September 1998", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The c.1797 dates a private house built for Thomas Mylrea, later the High Bailiff's residence; the earliest record of drink here traced so far is the Central Hotel in Porter's directory of 1889.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Registered Building No. 176 on the Isle of Man's register, registered on 30 September 1998, says the house was probably built as a residence for Thomas Mylrea about 1797, that it is also known as the Old High Bailiff's Residence, and that Frederick Tellet, the longest-serving High Bailiff, lived in it. That is a date for a building and not for a drinking house, which is why the row is out of the ranking. The register's own notice answers 404 from this machine, as every gov.im media link does, and the Internet Archive was offline when a copy was looked for, so its wording is known from the English Wikipedia list that transcribes the register with its numbers and dates. The first dated sight of drink comes from the printed Manx directories, transcribed on the Manx Note Book. Porter's directory of 1889 lists James Purcell at the Central, 1 Bowring Road, among Ramsey's hotels; the Ramsey directory of 1892 has him at the Central Hotel, Parliament Street, among the hotels and public houses; and Brown's of 1894 carries him at the Central under both addresses, Bowring Road among the hotels and Parliament Street among the licensed victuallers. Both streets meet Parliament Square, where the house stands, and OpenStreetMap's note on the building says the register document gives its census entries as 1 Bowring Road. No Central is named in the Ramsey lists of Thwaites's directory of 1863, Brown's of 1882 or Smith's of 1883. An absence from a directory dates nothing on its own, so 1889 is the earliest record traced rather than the year the trade began. Question one rests on OpenStreetMap, which tags the building as a pub and describes it as a free house, and records the old name Mylrea's House; the trading status is believed rather than confirmed, and a status check is still owed.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Buildings_and_Conservation_Areas_of_the_Isle_of_Man | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/102856141 | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/pd1889/ra_class.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/dd1892/ry_dir.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/bd1894/ryc.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/tg1863/ry.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/bd1881/ra_a.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/sm1883/ra.htm", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-central-ramsey/" }, { "slug": "the-chapel-inn-coggeshall", "name": "The Chapel Inn", "city": "Coggeshall", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1554, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1337968), first listed 31 October 1966 and amended 5 September 1988, as Chapel Hotel, 4 Market Hill, with group value", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A pub with a large food trade: the counter serves four changing cask beers without a meal or a booking, from noon on most days.", "evidence_notes": "The pub's own history page calls the Chapel Inn the oldest licensed pub in Coggeshall and gives 1554 as the year it became a legally licensed premises. The same page offers two older dates, and neither is about drink: 1256 is the chapel the house is named after, which it says stood on the site until it was demolished in 1787, and the same year is given for the market that named Market Hill; 1376 is the first mention of the predecessor building as the home of John Sewell, High Sheriff of Essex, killed in the rising of 1381. A chapel and a private house are not drinking houses, so the date this site records for the pub is 1554 and not the older figures. Historic England lists the building Grade II* as Chapel Hotel, 4 Market Hill, first listed on 31 October 1966 and amended on 5 September 1988, with group value. The full entry was read on 17 September 2026 and it is a description of a late medieval house rather than of an inn: a two-bay hall facing east with a two-bay crosswing to the left, a C16 or C17 wing behind the hall, an early C17 extension beyond that and an early to mid nineteenth-century brick wing to the right, all behind the plastered front of pilasters, plaster band, dentilled cornice and parapet that a visitor sees from the hill. Three details in it are worth a reader's attention. The crosswing's jetty has been underbuilt and its jetty plate is gone, but the heavy binding beam chamfered in two orders and the square-section joists tenoned into it survive, and on the soffits of some of those joists are traces of floral painting of about 1600 under brown varnish. The hall's floor was inserted about 1600, with a chamfered axial beam and plain joists, and a dado of oak panelling went in at the same time — so the room a drinker sits in was made about half a century after the year the pub claims. And the partition between hall and crosswing is smoke-blackened at roof level, which is what an open medieval hall leaves behind. The entry adds, from G. F. Beaumont's history of Coggeshall of 1890, that it was probably the house of John Sewall, Sheriff of Essex in 1381, later known as Ayworth's or Edgeworth's — house names, not inn signs. The register also says that although most of the frame is behind later finishes, enough is visible to establish that the original building is substantially present and structurally unaltered. So the fabric is a century and a half older than the claim, and the claim is at least of the right kind, since a licence is drink-led trade; but no record of a 1554 licence has been traced, and the earliest independent naming of the premises we can point at is the 1966 statutory list, which calls the house a hotel. Grade B: the building is documented to the claimed age and beyond it, and the drinking is first recorded very much later. The 1554 rests on the pub's own account, and Essex Record Office licensing records have not yet been searched for it.", "sources": "https://thechapelinn.com/history/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1337968 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1306228 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/chapel-inn-coggeshall-186125 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/300770 | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/368296630 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1337968", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-chapel-inn-coggeshall/" }, { "slug": "the-chequers-oxford", "name": "The Chequers", "city": "Oxford", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": 1605, "gap_years": 105, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The operator says a moneylender's tenement was rebuilt as a tavern in the 1500s and that much of the interior is sixteenth-century, and CAMRA notes that the name Chequers is first recorded in 1605, which is the earliest cited record of drink sold here. A second account, the Oxford History survey of the High Street, fills in the century between them from the property records. It has the house standing in the fifteenth century as a moneylender's — the chequerboard being the old sign of the money-lending trade — bought by All Souls College in 1466, and rebuilt about 1500 as a tavern by Alderman Richard Kent, after whom it was called Kent's Hall. It then gives a dated run of occupation: John Clayton paying tax on twenty windows at the tavern in 1696, the gateway in Mr Leazenby's hands in 1772, and licensees from Howell Goddard, who held it until 1776, through William Palmer in 1791 and George Stroud from 1839 to 1861, traced in the censuses of 1841, 1851 and 1861. The widely quoted house date of 1260 appears in none of it. The grade stays at C because the rebuilding of about 1500 is a historian's dating rather than a document of trade, and the first such document is still 1605.", "sources": "https://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/restaurants/southeast/thechequersoxford | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/chequers-oxford-156964 | https://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/high/tour/south/131_132_chequers.html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/268729", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-chequers-oxford/" }, { "slug": "the-chequers-inn-ledsham", "name": "The Chequers Inn", "city": "Ledsham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1540, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in the National Heritage List for England. A search of the list across Ledsham on 17 September 2026 returned ten entries, among them the K6 telephone kiosk standing beside the inn (list entry 1247769), the Grade I Church of All Saints and Sir John Lewis's Cottages, and nothing for the house itself", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1540 date comes from The Yorkshireman's 2025 round-up, and the pub's own site states no founding date. The national heritage list has now been searched across the village: it holds ten entries at Ledsham, among them the church, the old vicarage, Sir John Lewis's Cottages and the telephone kiosk that stands beside the inn, and none at all for the Chequers. So there is no listing description to date the walls, and the 1540 rests on one round-up. That is an absence we have established rather than assumed, and the next thing to look for is a licensing or manorial record rather than a designation.", "sources": "https://the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://www.thechequersinn.com/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1247769 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/320843", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-chequers-inn-ledsham/" }, { "slug": "the-cherub-inn-dartmouth", "name": "The Cherub Inn", "city": "Dartmouth", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1380, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II*, National Heritage List for England 1209644, listed 13 September 1949 as The Cherub, 13 Higher Street", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Built c.1380 as a merchant’s house; a private members’ club from the 1950s and a free house and restaurant only from the 1970s.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim of about 1380 comes from the pub and is repeated by CAMRA's branch. Historic England's list entry, read on 17 September 2026 through an archived copy of entry 1209644, does not support it: the register dates the merchant's house to probably the second half of the fifteenth century and records a restoration for Cresswell Mullet by Blamey and Co. about 1958, citing P. Russell's account of the house in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 1959. That is seventy to a hundred and twenty years later than the claimed date, which is why the grade is now C rather than B. What the register does support is the superlative the page prints beside it: it calls number 13 Higher Street the oldest complete house still standing in Dartmouth and one of the oldest town houses in the south-west. The listing is grade II* rather than the grade II this page carried. Drinking here is later still — the pub's own history has the building reopening in the 1950s as a private members' club and becoming a free house and restaurant in the 1970s — so it keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/cherub-inn-dartmouth-148620 | https://thecherub.co.uk/ | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1209644 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1429207", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-cherub-inn-dartmouth/" }, { "slug": "the-church-house-inn-harberton", "name": "The Church House Inn", "city": "Harberton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II*, National Heritage List for England 1108225, listed 9 February 1961 as Church House Inn", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA dates the building to the mid-to-late sixteenth century, and Historic England now says the same thing independently and in much more detail. Its list entry, read on 17 September 2026 through an archived copy of entry 1108225, describes a public house, originally the church house, of circa mid to late sixteenth century, at grade II*. The plan is three rooms with a large central hall heated by a rear lateral stack; the screen between hall and end room is plank-and-muntin with roll-moulded muntins and a moulded head beam, with butt stops high up where a bench has gone; a sixteenth-century four-light moulded timber window frame with four-centred arched heads and roundels in the spandrels survives in the front, a doorway cut through two of its lights; and the roof carries eleven trusses, probably raised crucks with curved feet and mostly jointed. Church houses were built for the parish's ales, so drinking here is plausible from the start, but nothing traced records it, and the claims of twelfth- or thirteenth-century origin that circulate have nothing behind them. So the fabric is of the claimed century and the drinking is not documented at it, which is grade B.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/church-house-inn-harberton-148691 | https://churchhouseinnharberton.com/ | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1108225 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1726682", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-church-house-inn-harberton/" }, { "slug": "the-clachan-inn-drymen", "name": "The Clachan Inn", "city": "Drymen", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1734, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in Historic Environment Scotland's designations. A search of Drymen on 17 September 2026 returned the Winnock Hotel across the square (LB3912, category B) and 4 The Square, a cottage dated 1864 on a window lintel (LB49636, category C), and nothing for the Clachan", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn, the village heritage trail and CAMRA all repeat a licence of 1734 and a first licensee called Mistress Gow, said to be Rob Roy's sister; the licence itself has never been produced. The national designations have now been searched across Drymen rather than left open: they hold the Winnock Hotel on the other side of the square and 4 The Square, a cottage the record dates 1864 from a window lintel, and no entry at all for the Clachan. So there is no listing description to date these walls, and the 1734 rests on the village's own telling. What is certain is the trade: CAMRA's Forth Valley branch has the Clachan in the Good Beer Guide, licensed from eleven in the morning Monday to Saturday and half past twelve on Sunday, with two handpumps of Loch Lomond and other Scottish beers, in freehold hands and with children admitted until nine.", "sources": "https://www.clachaninndrymen.co.uk/history/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/clachan-inn-drymen-168603 | https://www.drymen.org/heritage-trail | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/53909 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB49636", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-clachan-inn-drymen/" }, { "slug": "the-coylet-inn-loch-eck", "name": "The Coylet Inn", "city": "Loch Eck", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1650, "earliest_documented": 1897, "gap_years": 247, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in Historic Environment Scotland's designations, which hold nothing at all within two hundred metres of the house on the east shore of Loch Eck", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1650s comes from the press: the Scotsman's round-up of Scotland's oldest pubs says the inn dates back to the 1650s, when it was a coaching inn, and a trade report and the 2024 sale particulars call it 17th-century. The inn's own site gives no date. The Geological Survey's memoir on Cowal names the Coylet Inn on the east shore of Loch Eck in 1897, which fixes an inn of that name here by then. The national designations have now been searched around the house and hold nothing within two hundred metres of it, so no register dates this fabric and the 17th century rests on the press and the sale particulars. It was on the market in 2024 while still trading.", "sources": "https://sltn.co.uk/2024/07/01/spectacular-and-spooky-on-the-shores-of-loch-eck-in-argyll/ | https://www.cclproperty.com/property-for-sale/coylet-inn-loch-eck-dunoon-argyll-and-bute | https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/the-oldest-pubs-in-scotland/ | https://archive.org/details/geologyofcowalin00gunnrich | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/HES/HES_Designations/MapServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-4.98693%2C56.05226%2C-4.98049%2C56.05586&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=DES_REF%2CDES_TITLE%2CCATEGORY&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1300462", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-coylet-inn-loch-eck/" }, { "slug": "the-cridford-inn-trusham", "name": "The Cridford Inn", "city": "Trusham", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 825, "earliest_documented": 1982, "gap_years": 1157, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1146542), first listed 2 July 1986 as Crideford Inn, Broadway, with group value", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1982", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The building is a genuinely old listed Devon longhouse, but it was a farmhouse until it was made into a pub and restaurant in August 1982, which CAMRA's South Devon branch states as plainly as the inn does. Historic England lists it grade II, under the spelling Crideford Inn, and first listed it on 2 July 1986 — four years after the conversion, so the register knows the building as an inn and says nothing about how long it has been one. The full entry was read on 17 September 2026 and it is worth reading for three reasons. It dates the house: probably fifteenth or sixteenth century, with floors inserted in the sixteenth and seventeenth, rendered stone rubble and cob under a corrugated iron roof that was originally thatched, on a four-room plan with a curved front wall and a bowed stair projection. It describes the window the house is proud of without endorsing the claim made for it — a sixteenth-century oak mullioned window of four ogee-headed chamfered lights, with the rebate for its shutter still in the outer frame — while the house calls it possibly the earliest surviving domestic window in England, which is the house's assessment and nobody else's. And it handles the 1081 exactly as this site would: the register records that a date of 1081 in a mosaic floor beneath the cobbled floor is said to have been seen when repairs were carried out, which is a report of a report and is not a dating. The same entry is candid about how much of what a visitor sees arrived with the conversion: the leaded glass in the windows is of about 1980, the fireplace in the third room has granite jambs and an ovolo-moulded lintel brought from another building and inserted below the original one at about the same date, and a stair with solid oak treads was taken out of the fourth room then too. The 825 and the Domesday link are the inn's own claims and nothing published by anybody else supports them.", "sources": "https://thecridfordinn.co.uk/history/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/cridford-inn-trusham-148771 | https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/devon/22576178.11-historical-pubs-devon-visit/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1146542 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1085728 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1146542", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-cridford-inn-trusham/" }, { "slug": "the-crosskeys-inn-toomebridge", "name": "The Crosskeys Inn", "city": "Toomebridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1654, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1654, "building_year_source": "Dendrochronology", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade B1 (Northern Ireland), HB07/09/011 A, with the walling beside the inn listed separately as HB07/09/011 B", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn brands itself as established in 1654, and that is where the date comes from; the address it used for its own site now leads to a page offering the domain for sale, so nothing it publishes can be read. Tourism NI and others cite tree-ring dating by Queen's University Belfast, reportedly in 2010, placing the building before 1654, while Wikipedia gives c.1740. No report of that dating has been traced, only accounts of it. Against those accounts stands the register. Northern Ireland's listed buildings dataset, read on 17 September 2026, holds the inn as HB07/09/011 A, grade B1, in public house use, and dates its construction to between 1820 and 1839 — later than the claim by nearly two centuries, and later even than the c.1740 Wikipedia gives. Grade B asks for fabric documented to the age claimed, and the only document traced puts the fabric far later, so the grade moves to tradition until the tree-ring report itself can be read. Use as a coaching stop, shop and post office is attested only later.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosskeys_Inn | https://discovernorthernireland.com/listing/the-crosskeys-inn/68991101/ | https://www.oldest.org/entertainment/irish-pubs/ | https://rebelatlas.com/destinations/europe/ireland/where-is-irelands-oldest-pub-10-historic-pubs-with-a-claim-to-the-title/ | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Listed_Buildings_Centroid/FeatureServer/0/query?where=HB_Ref_No+LIKE+%27HB07%2F09%2F011%25%27&outFields=HB_Ref_No%2CAddress%2CCurrentGra%2CDate_Const%2CCurrentUse%2CFormerUse&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/742546", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-crosskeys-inn-toomebridge/" }, { "slug": "the-dolphin-tavern-penzance", "name": "The Dolphin Tavern", "city": "Penzance", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1585, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1585, the link to Sir John Hawkins and the story of the first pipe of tobacco smoked in England are local tradition; no documentary proof has been found. A second account, published by Cornish Story at the Institute of Cornish Studies, is franker than the tavern's own and differs from it in two places. It says the age of the building is unknown, placing the granite front somewhere in the fourteenth century rather than the sixteenth; and it dates the Hawkins recruiting to 1595, ten years after the year over the door. It repeats the Raleigh story only as something said, and mentions the courtroom and Judge Jeffreys without a date or a record. The tavern's own site sets out the 1585, the Hawkins, Raleigh and courtroom stories together and shows hours of eleven in the morning to eleven at night, seven days. All tradition rather than record, so grade C is right.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/139050 | https://dolphintavern.co.uk/ | https://cornishstory.com/2018/09/08/heritage-on-the-harbour-the-dolphin-inn-penzance/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/551181", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-dolphin-tavern-penzance/" }, { "slug": "the-drovers-inn-inverarnan", "name": "The Drovers Inn", "city": "Inverarnan", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1705, "earliest_documented": 1776, "gap_years": 71, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB8288), designated 5 October 1971, and B-grouped with the Drover's Inn stables and steading opposite", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic Environment Scotland dates the core to the eighteenth century, notes the inn on a map of 1776, and suggests it may have begun as barracks for Caulfield's military road of 1748-53, with additions of about 1825-30 and of 1853. All of that sits against the 1705, for which no source has been found, and the house itself is careful in its wording, claiming three centuries rather than a year. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the record names the map, which matters more than the year on its own: it is Taylor and Skinner's survey of the Scottish roads, published in 1776 and held by the National Library of Scotland at EMS.b.3.48, and the register says the house is marked on it as an inn. That is the document behind the earliest record shown here, and it is sixty-nine years younger than the year the house is known by. Three other things come out of the same reading. The designation is of 5 October 1971 and the inn is B-grouped with its stables and steading across the road. An older version of the list description had this as the original house of the Glen Falloch estate, and Historic Environment Scotland now calls that unlikely, offering the road-builders' barracks instead. And the register's reading list is where anyone going further should start: Charles McKean's architectural guide to Stirling and the Trossachs of 1994 and the Buildings of Scotland volume for Stirling and central Scotland of 2002, neither of which has been read here. The bar is open to non-residents and dogs, with live music every weekend and food served daily.", "sources": "https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB8288 | https://www.droversinn.co.uk/history/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1636447", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-drovers-inn-inverarnan/" }, { "slug": "the-ear-inn-new-york-city", "name": "The Ear Inn", "city": "New York City", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1817, "earliest_documented": 1835, "gap_years": 18, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NYC Landmark (1969); NRHP (2009)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Federal-style James Brown House is first recorded in 1817; records show a tavern in the ground-floor shop from at least 1835, probably earlier. The name 'Ear Inn' dates only from 1977, when the B of the old BAR sign was painted over.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown_House_(Manhattan) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ear_Inn | https://www.theearinn.com/about | https://a816-health.nyc.gov/ABCEatsRestaurants/#/restaurant/40370168", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-ear-inn-new-york-city/" }, { "slug": "the-fleece-inn-bretforton", "name": "The Fleece Inn", "city": "Bretforton", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1400, "earliest_documented": 1848, "gap_years": 448, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building (NHLE 1081605)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1848", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The half-timbered longhouse is documented as early 15th century, but it was a farmhouse and was first licensed in 1848. Its age as a building is sound; its history as a pub is Victorian.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleece_Inn | https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/worcestershire-herefordshire/the-fleece-inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/fleece-inn-bretforton-153816 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/685847", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-fleece-inn-bretforton/" }, { "slug": "the-fox-inn-corfe-castle", "name": "The Fox Inn", "city": "Corfe Castle", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1568, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1278386), designated 20 November 1959", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The grade here rested on the pub and CAMRA's East Dorset branch both describing a sixteenth-century building, with the listing cited as though it agreed. It does not. Historic England's entry 1278386, first listed on 20 November 1959 as The Fox Inn, West Street, with group value, describes a small inn in a terrace of the eighteenth century: rubble stone, stone slate roof, brick stacks at the rear, two storeys, a ledged door opening to a passage through to the back and a panelled door to the inn, with a three-light shop-type window between them under ornamental arched lights, two casements with fanlights above, and rear wings added in matching construction and reached from the passage. Nothing in it is sixteenth-century. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the entry also names its authority, which the page had not: the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments' inventory of Dorset, volume II South-East, published in 1970, in which this house is monument 121. So the eighteenth century is a surveyed date from a published inventory rather than a line in a list. The specific year 1568, which circulates in secondary sources, has never been traced to a document, and the house itself claims only the sixteenth century and to be reputed the oldest pub in the village. CAMRA also judges that too few old fittings survive inside for its inventory of historic interiors.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/fox-inn-corfe-castle-149525 | https://www.thefoxinncorfecastle.com/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1278386 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1090204 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1278386", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-fox-inn-corfe-castle/" }, { "slug": "the-garrick-inn-stratford-upon-avon", "name": "The Garrick Inn", "city": "Stratford-upon-Avon", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1596, "earliest_documented": 1718, "gap_years": 122, "building_year": 1596, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (NHLE 1187814)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The date is the listing's: Historic England describes a public house of about 1596 with a facade heavily restored around 1912, replacing a brick front of about 1800, and lists it Grade II*. Documented inn use on the site runs from 1718, as the Greyhound and later the Reindeer; the pub's claim to be Stratford's oldest is contested.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrick_Inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/garrick-stratford-upon-avon-153720 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1187814 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/503501", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-garrick-inn-stratford-upon-avon/" }, { "slug": "the-george-inn-london", "name": "The George Inn", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1542, "earliest_documented": 1542, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1677, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade I listed (Historic England 1378357), first listed 2 March 1950", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The c.1542 comes from Historic England's public history writing rather than from the inn, which claims only the 16th century: Heritage Calling gives the earliest known reference to an inn on the site as a map of Southwark made around 1542, and notes John Stow's later list of 'many fair inns'. The surviving galleried range was rebuilt in 1677 after the 1676 fire; two other wings were demolished in 1889 for railway warehousing. The statutory list entry was read on 17 September 2026 and agrees, with one detail the page did not have. Entry 1378357, grade I, first listed on 2 March 1950 as No. 77 The George Inn, calls the house an inn of the seventeenth century in timber frame and brick, forming the south range of a coaching inn once ranged around a quadrangle, with two tiers of galleries on cantilevered beams and wooden Doric columns. Its historical note says the original inn dates back at least to the sixteenth century, and its description of the cellar records reused medieval beams and squared stonework of possible medieval origin in the left side wall — the oldest fabric anyone has recorded here. It confirms the Great Eastern Railway's ownership, the demolition of the north range in 1874 and the gift to the National Trust in 1937.", "sources": "https://heritagecalling.com/2025/09/25/what-is-the-oldest-historic-pub-in-london/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/george-london-158364 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_George_Inn,_Southwark | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1378357 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/364214", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-george-inn-london/" }, { "slug": "the-globe-inn-dumfries", "name": "The Globe Inn", "city": "Dumfries", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1610, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category A listed (LB26230), designated 11 July 1961", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic Environment Scotland lists the Globe at category A, its highest grade, and dates the building to the mid eighteenth century with alterations and additions; the oldest year on it is a re-set datestone of 1696, re-set meaning carried here from somewhere else. So the 1610 the inn claims is a century and a half ahead of anything the register can see, and the inn itself admits little is documented about its early proprietors. What is documented is Burns: the listing calls it an inn frequented by him, CAMRA's branch records the etchings on two windowpanes in the upstairs bedroom as authenticated, and the Burns Howff Club still meets here. CAMRA gives the interior two stars on its national inventory — very special national historic interest — for the panelled snug with its old gantry and counter, and two eighteenth-century panelled rooms now used for dining. The same body's other record says much the same thing in a different vocabulary. Canmore, the national record of the historic environment, holds the Globe as site NX97NE 262.00, entered in March 2000 and last touched in March 2003, and classes it a public house of the eighteenth century — not of the seventeenth, and not of 1610. A further Canmore record was opened on 27 February 2026 for a bakehouse behind the inn at the same address, NX97NE 829.00, dated only as post-medieval. Neither is an independent reading: Canmore and the statutory list are both Historic Environment Scotland on different hosts, and the narrative that might cite a document sits behind a challenge page no script gets past. What the two together do fix is the register's own point and its precision — the listed position is digitised on Ordnance Survey MasterMap to within ten metres of 56 High Street, and the register's mapped entry for it was last revised on 2 August 2021.", "sources": "https://www.globeinndumfries.co.uk/our-history/ | https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/historic-dumfries-pub-the-globe-inn-to-reopen-following-refurbishment/ | https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/dumfries-and-galloway/dumfries/restaurant/1610 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB26230 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/globe-inn-high-st-dumfries-148414 | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/CANMORE/Canmore_Points/MapServer/0/query?where=CANMOREID+IN+%28159449%2C387510%29&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/HES/Listed_Buildings/MapServer/0/query?where=DES_REF+IN+%28%27LB26230%27%2C%27LB28938%27%29&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/876265 | https://www.globeinndumfries.co.uk/events/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-globe-inn-dumfries/" }, { "slug": "the-golden-fleece-york", "name": "The Golden Fleece", "city": "York", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1503, "earliest_documented": 1668, "gap_years": 165, "building_year": 1840, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "York's city archives record the property in 1503, when it belonged to the Merchant Adventurers, but nothing in that entry makes it an inn. York Archaeological Trust's Jorvik pages and the Wikipedia article, following Young (2015), have it known as an inn from 1656 and licensed only in 1668, and that licence is the first firm record of drinking use. Historic England lists the standing building as a rebuilding of about 1840, refurbished in 1926, so neither the fabric nor the trade reaches 1503.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece,_York | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1256915 | https://the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://www.jorvik.co.uk/golden-fleece/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/golden-fleece-york-123355 | https://web.archive.org/web/20260307212422/https://www.thegoldenfleeceyork.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/245755", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-golden-fleece-york/" }, { "slug": "the-golden-lamb-lebanon", "name": "The Golden Lamb", "city": "Lebanon", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1803, "earliest_documented": 1803, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1815, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "NRHP (1978, ref. 78002204)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "On 23 December 1803 Jonas Seaman paid four dollars for a licence to keep 'a house of public entertainment' on the site. The present brick building dates from 1815, so the site, not the structure, goes back to 1803. The county history of Warren County published in 1882, whose general chapters were prepared by Josiah Morrow, adds two things and complicates a third. Jonas Seaman is listed there among the pioneers who had settled in Turtle Creek township before the end of the eighteenth century, so he was on the ground before the licence. The name Golden Lamb appears in the same book at 1826, as the house where Lebanon dined after the Independence Day oration — the earliest dated use of the sign traced from here. And the history calls Lebanon's first tavern not this house but Ephraim Hathaway's, a hewed-log house built by Ichabod Corwin in the spring of 1800, bought by Hathaway with about ten acres round it, used for the courts in 1803 and 1804 and trading under the sign of a Black Horse.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Lamb_Inn | https://www.goldenlamb.com/ | https://www.hmdb.org/results.asp?Search=Keyword&SearchFor=Golden+Lamb | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=200416 | https://archive.org/details/historyofwarrenc01morr", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-golden-lamb-lebanon/" }, { "slug": "the-grapes-london", "name": "The Grapes", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1583, "earliest_documented": 1805, "gap_years": 222, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1260573)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the pub's own: its website calls it a traditional London pub since 1583. No record is cited for that date, and the surviving narrow riverside building is 18th-century.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/grapes-limehouse-155228 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes,_Limehouse | https://www.thegrapes.co.uk | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260573 | https://alondoninheritance.com/the-thames/narrow-street-the-story-of-a-riverside-community/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/43301", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-grapes-london/" }, { "slug": "the-greyhound-kinsale", "name": "The Greyhound", "city": "Kinsale", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1690, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The year here is the travel press's and not the house's. Yay Cork, writing in November 2020, dates the serving to 1690 and calls it the oldest bar in Kinsale; the travel publisher The Irish Road Trip says the licence stretches back to 1690 and that the building is older than the licence. Neither names a record, and nothing has been traced for these premises — no licence roll, no deed, no dated map — so the year is entered as somebody else's claim and graded as tradition until a document turns up. On the building, this page said the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage held nothing for Market Square, and that was wrong. Read through the inventory's open data on 17 September 2026, the survey covers the square thoroughly, including the market house of about 1610 that is now the museum, the water pump, the telephone box and several houses turned public house. Its record 20851078, mapped about two metres from the bar, describes an attached single-bay three-storey former house built about 1770, with a two-bay two-storey dormer-attic former house beside it, both now in use as a public house, under a hipped slate roof with wrought-iron eaves brackets. If that is this bar, and the position says it is, the fabric is a century later than the 1690. Two smaller things worth knowing. The bar is mapped as The Grey Hound, in two words, which is why searches under one word miss it, and it also trades under the longer name The Greyhound and Market Bar. The trading is no longer a guess: Revenue's list of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day publican's licence for Market Square, Kinsale, held by Oakley Taverns Limited and trading as the Grey Hound Bar, with Enda Burke as its nominee, reference CXP862. The map agrees, the premises still entered as a pub, with the postcode, on 9 January 2026.", "sources": "https://www.yaycork.ie/the-oldest-bar-in-kinsale-is-featured-in-this-lovely-calendar-of-pubs-snugs/ | https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/best-kinsale-pubs/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1385806310 | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=REG_NO%3D20851078&outFields=REG_NO%2CNAME%2CSTREET1%2CTOWN%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CIN_USE_AS_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO%2CLATITUDE%2CLONGITUDE%2CDESCRIPTION&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-greyhound-kinsale/" }, { "slug": "the-griswold-inn-essex", "name": "The Griswold Inn", "city": "Essex", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1776, "earliest_documented": 1814, "gap_years": 38, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Contributing property to the Essex Historic District — a district listing, which describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's opening by the Griswold family in 1776 is its own tradition and no licence has been traced; what is recorded on the state marker is that the house was here at the time of the British raid on Essex in 1814. Wikipedia has the Tap Room building beginning as a schoolhouse of about 1735, moved to the site. Six families have owned the inn in its history, the present one the Pauls, for about thirty years, and the house is preparing to mark its 250th year in 2026. The Tap Room opens daily from half past eleven, with music several nights a week until eleven, so a drink here does not wait on a meal.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_Inn | https://griswoldinn.com/ | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=183087 | https://savingplaces.org/stories/the-tap-room-at-the-griswold-inn-in-essex-connecticut | https://ctvisit.com/listings/griswold-inn-tap-room | https://archive.org/details/connecticutguide00federich", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-griswold-inn-essex/" }, { "slug": "the-groes-inn-tyn-y-groes", "name": "The Groes Inn", "city": "Ty'n-y-Groes", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1573, "earliest_documented": 1578, "gap_years": 5, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 3198), designated 13 October 1966", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Cadw's listing opens with a record rather than a tradition: the house was established as an inn by 1578, when the 'tavarne y Groes' is named in a court order, and it appears again under that name in June 1580. That is drink trade on these premises five years after the 1573 that North Wales Live gives as a first licence, which is why the grade is A. The licence itself has not been seen, and the 1573 is the newspaper's rather than the inn's: the inn's own pages claim to be the first licensed house in Wales but name no year. Cadw dates the present structure largely to the late seventeenth century, with a possible late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century core in the inglenook and its ogee-stopped bressummer, and is blunt about the painted 1400 on the front, calling it an inaccurate late nineteenth-century pseudo-historical addition. The inn's own account adds a fifteenth-century two-storey house as the original, the name Commercial Inn at Groesynyd in the nineteenth century, and the deeds witnessed by the fourth Duke of Wellington in 1889. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, which keeps the national record of buildings separately from the register, is more cautious than Cadw about the same house. Its entry, number 26356, compiled by John Wiles in May 2007 from the Commission's Caernarvonshire inventory of 1956 and from the listing, calls the Groes a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century house or inn, possibly the tavern named in 1578, or else standing on its site: the document is not in doubt, the identification of the standing walls with it is. It describes a two-storey, three-bay original house with a large fireplace in the north wall, greatly extended from the nineteenth century onwards with ranges added north, south and west and outbuildings to the south converted, all now behind a long whitened facade under one hipped slate roof; the cottage that stood across the road was swept away by road widening. The Commission also had the timbers tested, and this is the hardest evidence on the page about the fabric. Six oak core samples were taken in June 2014 — from a ceiling beam and the fireplace lintel at the north end, the south end beam, the south intermediate ceiling beam and both principal rafters of the second truss — for the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, commissioned by the charity Dating Old Welsh Houses with the Commission. Five of them cross-matched into a well-replicated 117-year chronology, and it failed to date against the reference curves. The laboratory's report of September 2014, by M. C. Bridge and D. Miles, says the building is thought to be quite late, probably eighteenth or nineteenth century, that its timbers were later in style than most of the houses the project looked at, and that the chronology may yet date when more local material of that period has been measured. Richard Suggett, writing the historical note for the Commission in November 2014, has the Groes as originally a storeyed house of the Snowdonian plan-type, possibly the tavern of the late-Elizabethan documents, keeping a large end chimney and a substantial beamed ceiling but extended and modernised in several phases, with a roof and stair that may be eighteenth-century. So the oldest thing on this site that can be dated is the court order, not the building; no tree-ring date exists, and two Commission readings and a laboratory all place the standing fabric later than the claim it carries.", "sources": "https://www.groesinn.com/ | https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/north-waless-oldest-pubsand-ghosts-14818052 | https://www.northwalesholidaycottages.co.uk/other-information/blog/things-to-do/historic-pubs-of-north-wales/ | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=3198 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/groes-inn-tyn-y-groes-115863 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/60812 | https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/26356/ | https://coflein.gov.uk/media/81/893/dcp2016_048.pdf | https://www.groesinn.com/christmas", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-groes-inn-tyn-y-groes/" }, { "slug": "the-harp-inn-old-radnor", "name": "The Harp Inn", "city": "Old Radnor", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1500, "building_year_source": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/harp-inn-old-radnor-156796", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 9132), designated 15 February 1993", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Widely described elsewhere as an early fifteenth-century inn, including by CAMRA, but the pub itself says only that it has offered hospitality since the sixteenth century. Cadw's full report agrees with the pub and not with the guidebooks: the house is of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, a former cross-passage timber-framed dwelling whose walls were rebuilt in rubble stone, with large-panel framing still showing on the rear wall and on the partition beside the old passage, scroll-stopped beams, a rubble-lined fireplace with a brick bread oven, and flagged floors throughout. It has been listed at grade II since 15 February 1993, for its group value with the parish church in a fine landscape setting. Two smaller corrections follow from the same report. Cadw does not call the building a longhouse, which is the word almost everyone else uses; and it dates the Landmark Trust's rebuilding of the byre and barn end to 1971, where this page and others had 1972. What remains undocumented is the drinking: no record of ale sold here in the sixteenth century has been traced, which is why this stays a grade B.", "sources": "https://harpinnoldradnor.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/harp-inn-old-radnor-156796 | https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q29487959 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=9132 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/178936", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-harp-inn-old-radnor/" }, { "slug": "the-hawes-inn-south-queensferry", "name": "The Hawes Inn", "city": "South Queensferry", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1600, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (HES LB40354)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 17th century is the listing's date, not the inn's. Historic Environment Scotland lists 2 Newhalls Road, the Hawes Inn, at Category B and dates the original part to the later 17th century, with 19th-century extension westward and a Baronial east wing of 1893 by Sydney Mitchell & Wilson. The date stone reading 'IS BB 1638' was reused from the old house of New Halls, so it dates that house and not this one, and a claim naming a century and no year is sorted from the century's first year. No record of drink sold here at the claimed date has been traced; the house publishes no date of its own. Robert Louis Stevenson set part of Kidnapped (1886) in it.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Queensferry | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/hawes-inn-south-queensferry-150303 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/663501 | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB40354", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-hawes-inn-south-queensferry/" }, { "slug": "the-hole-in-the-wall-dublin", "name": "The Hole in the Wall", "city": "Dublin", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1651, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1651 and the name Ye Signe of Ye Blackhorse are published by Visit Dublin, and a travel guide says the pub's own history is where the year comes from; no primary document was found and nothing the pub publishes was traced. The present name dates from the late 1800s, when drink was reportedly passed to soldiers through a gap in the park wall.", "sources": "https://www.visitdublin.com/guides/oldest-pubs-dublin | https://rebelatlas.com/destinations/europe/ireland/where-is-irelands-oldest-pub-10-historic-pubs-with-a-claim-to-the-title/ | https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/oldest-pubs-in-dublin/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-hole-in-the-wall-dublin/" }, { "slug": "the-horse-you-came-in-on-saloon-baltimore", "name": "The Horse You Came In On Saloon", "city": "Baltimore", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1775, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "In the Fell's Point Historic District, certified on the National Register 28 March 1969 under 69000319 and extended 14 July 1986 under 86003777; we have not traced an individual listing for the saloon", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1775 is published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's magazine, which says the tavern that originally occupied this colonial building was founded in 1775 and that the building has been a bar ever since; Wikipedia attaches the year to the Fountain Inn, the saloon's predecessor. No primary record was found, and nothing the bar publishes was traced. The popular story that this was Edgar Allan Poe's last stop is described as unproven by both Wikipedia and the National Trust. The district listing was read from the register itself on 17 September 2026. The National Park Service's register locations service places 1626 Thames Street inside the Fell's Point Historic District, certified on 28 March 1969 under 69000319, and inside the boundary increase of 14 July 1986 under 86003777; no individual listing for the saloon is returned. That is worth saying carefully, because a district listing describes and dates a neighbourhood and not one house in it. Standing inside the boundary tells a reader that Thames Street is old; it says nothing at all about 1775.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_You_Came_In_On_Saloon | https://savingplaces.org/stories/historic-bars-baltimores-the-horse-you-came-in-on-saloon | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=RESNAME+LIKE+%27Fells+Point+Historic+District%25%27&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CResType%2CAddress%2CCity%2CState%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-horse-you-came-in-on-saloon-baltimore/" }, { "slug": "the-inn-at-hancock-hancock", "name": "The Inn at Hancock", "city": "Hancock", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1789, "earliest_documented": 1828, "gap_years": 39, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Contributing building in the Hancock Village Historic District, entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 8 March 1988 (ref. 88000178)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A luxury inn again since May 2026; the Hunt Bar opens daily at four for drinks and canapés, and says local patrons are welcome.", "evidence_notes": "The inn says on its own pages that it has been welcoming locals and travellers since 1789 and is regarded as New Hampshire's oldest, and its reopening announcement and the press repeat both. The National Register nomination for the Hancock Village Historic District, entered on 8 March 1988, is the reason this is graded C rather than higher: it says the building was put up as a tavern for Noah Wheeler and that 1789 is the traditional date, but that it may have been built somewhat later. The same nomination is the earliest dated record traced of the house as an inn, in its entry on the Fox House across the street, built for Jedediah Fox about 1830 soon after his sale of the inn in 1828. Of the forty-three principal buildings in the district it is the only one that began as a tavern, and the rest of its life is written in its roofline: two bays added to the east, a Greek Revival two-storey porch that appears in a view of 1867, a mansard storey put on by J. F. Eaton in 1875, and a monumental Colonial Revival portico in the early twentieth century. It closed for three years and reopened on 1 May 2026 after a rebuilding as a luxury inn of fifteen suites, and the answer to whether the public may drink there is in the operator's own words: the Hunt Bar and Scullery, open daily from four until nine, is for guests staying at the inn and, it says, for local patrons who want a setting to meet friends in.", "sources": "https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/88000178_text | https://www.boston.com/travel/new-england-travel/2026/08/13/take-a-look-inside-new-hampshires-oldest-continuously-operated-inn/ | https://innathancock.com/dining/ | https://innathancock.com/the-inn/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_Village_Historic_District | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1207128034 | https://archive.org/details/newhampshireguid00federich", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-inn-at-hancock-hancock/" }, { "slug": "the-iron-door-saloon-groveland", "name": "The Iron Door Saloon", "city": "Groveland", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1852, "earliest_documented": 1896, "gap_years": 44, "building_year": 1852, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A saloon with a kitchen: the bar stays open after the kitchen closes, so a drink does not wait on a meal", "evidence_notes": "The granite building is dated to about 1852, when it was the Granite Store, but the saloon's own marker and pages say it became a drinking house, Jake's Place, in 1896 under Giacomo DeFarrari, and the name Iron Door dates from 1937. So the claim to be California's oldest saloon rests on the building rather than on the trade. The house advertises itself as serving since 1852. Lunch runs from eleven and dinner to eight or nine, and its own pages say the saloon stays open after the kitchen closes.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Door_Saloon | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=53273 | https://www.irondoorsaloon.com/ | https://www.kqed.org/news/11069400/150-years-of-slinging-drinks-a-visit-to-the-iron-door-saloon | https://archive.org/details/historyoftuolumn00lang", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-iron-door-saloon-groveland/" }, { "slug": "the-kentish-hotel-waiuku", "name": "The Kentish Hotel", "city": "Waiuku", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1851, "earliest_documented": 1853, "gap_years": 2, "building_year": 1851, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Wikipedia's Waiuku article says settler Edward Constable built it as an inn in 1851 or early 1852, and calls it New Zealand's longest continuously licensed hotel. RNZ (2018) says it has 'the best claim' to be NZ's oldest existing pub. Trading in 2026 is unconfirmed, and we could not reach a working website for it in September 2026.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiuku | https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018660891/new-zealand-s-finest-historic-pubs | https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/535/Kentish-Hotel | https://thekentishhotel.co.nz/about-us/history/ | https://www.justice.govt.nz/tribunals/arla/register-of-licences-and-certificates/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-kentish-hotel-waiuku/" }, { "slug": "the-lion-inn-blakey-ridge", "name": "The Lion Inn", "city": "Blakey Ridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1553, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the inn in the National Heritage List for England. A search of a kilometre and a half of moor around Blakey Ridge on 17 September 2026 returned six entries, every one of them a boundary stone or a guidestone, among them the guidestone at list entry 1149732", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's own history places its origin in 1553 or 1558, when a bush was hung out after brewing, and admits the evidence is circumstantial: medieval pottery found nearby and possible links to a friary. A search of the national heritage list around Blakey Ridge returns boundary stones and guide stones but no entry for the inn, so there is no listing description to date the walls. Newspaper writing about the pub repeats the story that monks built it between 1553 and 1558 without citing a source for it. Corn-market trade in the 18th century and mining trade in the 19th are described, but no early licence has been traced.", "sources": "https://www.lionblakey.co.uk/ | https://www.lionblakey.co.uk/history | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-11921396 | https://archive.org/details/scarborough048 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1149732 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1887237", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-lion-inn-blakey-ridge/" }, { "slug": "the-lion-inn-trellech", "name": "The Lion Inn", "city": "Trellech", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Wales", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1580, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Cadw 24924), designated 28 February 2001", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says it was built in 1580 as a coaching inn, brewhouse and smallholding. Cadw's full report, read on 17 September 2026, dates the house to probably about 1700, allowing that it could fall either side of that, with a rear outshut of about 1800 and a second from the late 20th century when the house was refurbished. It describes red sandstone rubble under Welsh slate, a two-storey and garret central-entry plan one room deep with the stair at the back, and a ground floor since opened out into one bar space with the line of the central passage still readable. Cadw designated it on 28 February 2001 as a good early 18th-century village inn and for its group value at the centre of Trellech. So the register reads the house as a generation or two younger than the pub's own date, and nothing traced records drink sold here in 1580.", "sources": "https://www.lioninn.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/lion-inn-trellech-161704 | https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=24924 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/152066", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-lion-inn-trellech/" }, { "slug": "the-locke-bar-limerick", "name": "The Locke Bar", "city": "Limerick", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1724, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The bar claims the site of one of Limerick's oldest pubs, dating to 1724; no supporting documents were found. The holding page that was on its website has gone, and Limerick.ie listed full opening hours when we checked in September 2026. There is a licensing record as well, found on 18 September 2026: Revenue's register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence at 3 George's Quay, Limerick, under reference LIP0433, held by Domanska Limited with Richard Costello as its nominee and trading as The Locke Bar and Restaurant. It says nothing about 1724 and everything about today: the class is the full public-house licence, so a drink is served here without a meal.", "sources": "https://www.lockebar.com/ | https://www.limerick.ie/discover/eat-see-do/dining-nightlife/dining/pub-grub/the-locke-bar-restaurant | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-locke-bar-limerick/" }, { "slug": "the-man-owar-balbriggan", "name": "The Man O'War", "city": "Balbriggan", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1595, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Recorded in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as reg. no. 11317001, Man of War, Courtlough, rated of regional importance for architectural and social interest", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1595 is published by Visit Dublin, which says there has been a pub on this hilltop since at least that year; a travel guide adds that the figure comes from deeds the pub itself cites. The deeds have not been published, and the pub has no website of its own we could find. The national inventory has now been read, and it puts the house two centuries later than the claim. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage records it as Man of War at Courtlough, reg. no. 11317001: a terraced six-bay single-storey thatched house of about 1800, within a range of 1750 to 1850, with a projecting entrance porch and a cast-iron water pump in front, a hipped thatched roof with a decorative thatched ridge, rendered single-pot stacks at the ends, nap render over rubble stone, square-headed openings with painted stone sills and reproduction sashes, and a timber door of about 1999. It gives the original use as a house rather than as a public house, the present use as house and public house, and rates it of regional importance for architectural and social interest. Its only neighbour in the inventory is the wall-mounted cast-iron post box of about 1885 outside, with a VR monogram. Later traditions say the house served as a turnpike toll point after 1732 and that Wolfe Tone breakfasted here in 1792, and nothing traced records drink sold here at any date.", "sources": "https://www.visitdublin.com/guides/oldest-pubs-dublin | https://rebelatlas.com/destinations/europe/ireland/where-is-irelands-oldest-pub-10-historic-pubs-with-a-claim-to-the-title/ | https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/oldest-pubs-in-dublin/ | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=REG_NO%3D11317001&outFields=REG_NO%2CNAME%2CTOWNLAND%2CCOUNTY%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CIN_USE_AS_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO%2CRATING%2CDESCRIPTION&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-man-owar-balbriggan/" }, { "slug": "the-mansion-house-st-catharines", "name": "The Mansion House", "city": "St. Catharines", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1806, "earliest_documented": 1826, "gap_years": 20, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "On the City of St. Catharines heritage register as 5 William Street; not designated under the Ontario Heritage Act and not within a heritage conservation district", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "An upscale bar and kitchen: cocktails and food, with the bar open late from Wednesday to Saturday", "evidence_notes": "The bar brands itself since 1806 and calls itself the oldest continually licensed bar in Canada; its own account says William Hamilton Merritt, promoter of the Welland Canal, built the place in the early 1800s as a home and store and that it became a hotel in 1826, where other accounts give 1828. Neither date has been traced to a record. The city's own heritage layer, published through the Niagara open data portal and searched on 17 September 2026, does carry the property: 5 William Street is on the St. Catharines heritage register. It is a listing and not a designation — neighbouring properties in the same search come back marked as designated under the Ontario Heritage Act or as part of the Yates Street and Port Dalhousie districts, and this one does not — and the register entry carries no construction date, no builder and no description. So the earliest fabric date for this building still rests on the bar's own telling of its history and on a pub magazine repeating it, which is not enough for a B: the grade is now C. The 1826 is the earliest year anybody offers for drink sold here, so the 1806 belongs to the building rather than the trade. A refit during the pandemic turned it into a cocktail-and-kitchen house, and that is what a visitor meets now.", "sources": "https://themansionhouse.ca/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://niagaraopendata.ca/dataset/heritage-properties-public | https://services6.arcgis.com/Yx1h0qHJ9wIpQWuU/arcgis/rest/services/Heritage_Properties_Public/FeatureServer/0/query?where=UPPER(PROPERTYNAME)+LIKE+%27%25WILLIAM%25%27&outFields=PROPERTYNAME%2CPROPHVALUE&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-mansion-house-st-catharines/" }, { "slug": "the-mayflower-london", "name": "The Mayflower", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1550, "earliest_documented": 1780, "gap_years": 230, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The c.1550 belongs to History Hit, whose page on the pub says it was established in 1550. The pub states no year of its own: its website calls itself the oldest pub on the River Thames and its history page reaches back only as far as the seafarers who bought a pint and a postage stamp here in the 1800s, when the house was the Spread Eagle and Crown. Historic England's Heritage Calling finds no continuity with 1550 — the earliest fabric is of the 1780s, and the house was rebuilt and renamed the Mayflower in the late 1950s. CAMRA dates the Shippe, the name the claim is usually hung on, to 1780, the same decade as that fabric rather than two centuries before it.", "sources": "https://heritagecalling.com/2025/09/25/what-is-the-oldest-historic-pub-in-london/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/mayflower-rotherhithe-158608 | https://www.historyhit.com/locations/the-mayflower/ | https://www.mayflowerpub.co.uk/history | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/364223", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-mayflower-london/" }, { "slug": "the-norseman-dublin", "name": "The Norseman", "city": "Dublin", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1696, "earliest_documented": 1862, "gap_years": 166, "building_year": 1900, "building_year_source": "https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50020101/the-norseman-28-29-essex-street-east-eustace-street-dublin-2-dublin", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "National Inventory of Architectural Heritage reg. no. 50020101, rated of regional importance; 29 Essex Street East is a protected structure, entry 2645 in Dublin City Council's Record of Protected Structures for the 2022-2028 development plan, entered as licensed premises", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub's own account gives 1696 as the year the premises was first licensed, and says the house sold drink from the 1500s as the Wooden Man Tavern, named for a carved Viking figure on the corner. Neither statement has been traced to a record. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, read again on 18 September 2026 from the survey's published data rather than from an archived copy of its web page, dates the standing building to about 1900, records both its original and its present use as a public house, and cites the earliest document anyone here can point at: mid-nineteenth-century maps show two buildings on the site, and Thom's Directory of 1862 has them held by a single tenant as a vintner's. The survey's own date range for the fabric, 1910 to 1930, is later than the c.1900 in its description, and the two are printed side by side in one record. It also notes that Essex Street was opened in 1674 and divided into east and west in the 1760s, which is worth weighing against a tavern at this address in the 1500s. A second publisher now says something about the building. Dublin City Council's Record of Protected Structures for the development plan of 2022 to 2028 protects 29 Essex Street East as entry 2645 and describes it in two words as licensed premises; 28, the other half of the address the national survey gives, carries no entry of its own. The council's position for 29 falls on the survey's position for this house, and the nearest other entries are 15 Eustace Street round the corner and 30 Essex Street East next door. Grade C: the 1696 is the house's own and the document is two centuries younger than the claim.", "sources": "https://www.norseman.ie/ | https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50020101/the-norseman-28-29-essex-street-east-eustace-street-dublin-2-dublin | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/281359242 | https://data.smartdublin.ie/dataset/f1dd00f0-5914-4b97-b66e-0dbb4bcb510c | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-norseman-dublin/" }, { "slug": "the-old-inn-mullion", "name": "The Old Inn", "city": "Mullion", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1328500), first listed 10 July 1957", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA and the inn describe a 16th-century partly thatched house beside the church. Historic England's entry, read on 17 September 2026, reads it differently: a public house possibly of the late 17th century, with two mid-19th-century wings to the side and rear, the older part whitewashed stone rubble with a cob first floor under a thatched roof with gabled ends and eyebrow eaves, on a two-room plan with a central cross passage at right angles to the road. It records a large exposed stone fireplace with a moulded timber lintel and a cloam oven on the right of the 17th-century block, and notes that the floor beams have been renewed and the interiors entirely restructured. Nothing in it reaches the 16th century, and no licence or other record of drink sold here has been traced, so the claim stays tradition.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-inn-mullion-138976 | https://oldinnmullion.co.uk/ | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1328500 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1876334", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-inn-mullion/" }, { "slug": "the-old-nags-head-edale", "name": "The Old Nag's Head", "city": "Edale", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1577, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1577, "building_year_source": "Historic England listing", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1096618), designated 24 September 1984 as The Old Nags Head", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The date the pub gives, 1577, is cut into the stone. Historic England lists the building as a public house of 1577 and early C20 date and records the dated lintel over the right-hand doorway, along with a C16 doorway inside the porch and a chamfered mullion window. That fixes the fabric to the claimed year, which is a grade B. Historic England's map service for the national list gives the entry its date: 1096618, grade II, designated on 24 September 1984, under the name The Old Nags Head — which matters here, because the listing is the only authority for the 1577 that is not the house or somebody repeating it. What no document yet shows is drinking here in 1577: the house was built as a farmstead in a valley of scattered booths, and the walkers who now start the Pennine Way at its door came much later.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1096618 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-nags-head-edale-147630 | https://www.the-old-nags-head.co.uk/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1259096 | https://www.the-old-nags-head.co.uk/news-offers-events/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-nags-head-edale/" }, { "slug": "the-old-thatch-killeagh", "name": "The Old Thatch", "city": "Killeagh", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1667, "earliest_documented": 1867, "gap_years": 200, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house's own site does not give the year. Archived on 11 June 2026, it says the trade goes back as far as the 1600s and calls the Old Thatch Ireland's oldest thatched pub; the 1667 is IrishCentral's, and it is arithmetic on a document — at the Castlemartyr quarter sessions of 1867 the owner John Conway sought to renew his licence, saying the house had been licensed for more than two hundred years, and was refused on the grounds that he was harbouring Fenians. A travel blog gives 1650 instead. The pub's own account traces the Sweeney family's ownership to the mid-1700s.", "sources": "https://www.irishcentral.com/travel/ireland-oldest-charming-pubs | https://irelandonabudget.com/14-of-irelands-oldest-pubs/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20260611123909/http://theoldthatch.ie/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-thatch-killeagh/" }, { "slug": "the-old-wellington-manchester", "name": "The Old Wellington", "city": "Manchester", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1552, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1552, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Built 1552 as a house and shop, a draper’s from 1554; first licensed as a public house in 1830 as the Vintners Arms.", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The timber-framed building is dated 1552 and was a draper's shop from 1554, per operator Nicholson's. It was a house and shop for centuries; the date it first became licensed was not verified here. It has been relocated, so the fabric is old but not on its original site.", "sources": "https://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/restaurants/northwest/theoldwellingtonmanchester | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Wellington_Inn | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-wellington-manchester-137520 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1818972", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-wellington-manchester/" }, { "slug": "the-old-windmill-coventry", "name": "The Old Windmill", "city": "Coventry", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1342948), designated 24 June 1974 as Old Windmill Inn", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA calls the Old Windmill a historic 16th-century pub, and Historic England lists the timber frame as C16 or earlier, oversailing at the first floor behind a stuccoed front, part of the group of medieval buildings on Spon Street. Fabric of the claimed age is documented, which is a grade B, but no licence or record of drinking from the 1500s has been traced. Historic England's map service dates the listing — entry 1342948, grade II, designated on 24 June 1974 under the name Old Windmill Inn — on the same day as most of the rest of Spon Street, which was listed street by street that June. The warren of small rooms, one of them a former brewhouse, is rated by CAMRA as of very special national interest.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1342948 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/old-windmill-coventry-140568 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/241116", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-old-windmill-coventry/" }, { "slug": "the-olde-angel-inn-niagara-on-the-lake", "name": "The Olde Angel Inn", "city": "Niagara-on-the-Lake", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1789, "earliest_documented": 1815, "gap_years": 26, "building_year": 1815, "building_year_source": "Hand-hewn beams and plank floors of the 1815 rebuilding", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn says it is 'believed to have been founded' as the Harmonious Coach House about 1789, and offers nothing to support the year. What is documented is the rebuilding by John Ross in 1815, after American forces burned Newark in 1813, and the hand-hewn beams and plank floors of that rebuilding are what a drinker sits among. No heritage designation for the property has been traced, although the town's old core is a heritage district. The inn keeps a public events calendar and takes bookings for rooms, cottages and live music.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Olde_Angel_Inn | https://oldeangelinn.com/about/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://oldeangelinn.com/ | https://archive.org/details/historyofniagara00carn", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-olde-angel-inn-niagara-on-the-lake/" }, { "slug": "the-original-rosslyn-inn-roslin", "name": "The Original Rosslyn Inn", "city": "Roslin", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1837, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1857, "building_year_source": "Historic Environment Scotland listing LB44175", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category C listed (Historic Environment Scotland LB44175), designated 7 March 1997", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The inn dates its business to 1837 and its building to 1857, both well after the 1750 cut-off for the Top 100", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn's own site dates the business to 1837 and the Harris family's tenure to 1973. Historic Environment Scotland (LB44175, category C, designated on 7 March 1997) dates the building to 1857 with an addition of 1892, and reads the front as two three-bay dwellings amalgamated, so the standing house is later than the claimed start. Read in full on 17 September 2026, the record adds where the 1892 comes from: a panel on the single-storey block to the east carries the date and a set of initials, which is the building dating itself rather than a surveyor's estimate. The register's reference for the main block is the first edition Ordnance Survey map, and the only book it cites is the RIAS architectural guide to Midlothian of 1995; neither has been read here. The 1660 date and the Johnson, Boswell and Burns visits often attached to this name belong to the older Roslin Inn beside the chapel, now Collegehill House (LB13029, listed as formerly The Old Inn). Outside the Top 100 because the inn dates from long after 1750.", "sources": "https://theoriginalrosslyninn.co.uk/ | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB44175 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/original-rosslyn-inn-roslin-150403 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roslin,_Midlothian | https://theoriginalrosslyninn.co.uk/whats-on/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/158930", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-original-rosslyn-inn-roslin/" }, { "slug": "the-palace-restaurant-and-saloon-prescott", "name": "The Palace Restaurant and Saloon", "city": "Prescott", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1877, "earliest_documented": 1877, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1901, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1877 comes from the marker the City of Prescott put up outside, which opens by saying the saloon's exact age is something of a puzzle and gives the first reliable documentation as an item in the Arizona Weekly Miner of 21 September 1877: Shaw and Standefer had fitted up the Palace in the most superb style. The original burned in 1883 and again in the great fire of 1900; the present building opened in 1901. The carved Brunswick bar was carried out of the fire and drinks were served from it across the street while Whiskey Row burned.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_Restaurant_and_Saloon | https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=21163 | https://thepalacerestaurantandsaloon.com/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-palace-restaurant-and-saloon-prescott/" }, { "slug": "the-parrot-canterbury", "name": "The Parrot", "city": "Canterbury", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1370, "earliest_documented": 1987, "gap_years": 617, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (per CAMRA)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 1987", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The c.1370 is a local heritage blog's dating of the building, a Wealden hall known as St Radigund's Hall, said to have been built on Roman foundations and restored after narrowly escaping demolition in the 1930s; CAMRA calls it a 14th-century gem and the oldest building in Canterbury but names no year, and the pub's own site gives no date at all. CAMRA records that it only became a pub in 1987, so there is no medieval drinking-house history here.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/parrot-canterbury-132697 | https://kent.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=287044 | https://unknownkentandsussex.co.uk/ten-of-the-oldest-pubs-in-kent/ | https://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/parrott-inn | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1103370", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-parrot-canterbury/" }, { "slug": "the-pickerel-inn-cambridge", "name": "The Pickerel Inn", "city": "Cambridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1500, "earliest_documented": 1608, "gap_years": 108, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1101465), designated 29 March 1962", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Greene King says the building is fifteenth-century and that it has served drinkers since the sixteenth; CAMRA notes the pub's own claim of a licence from 1608, and no earlier record of an inn here has been published. The national register disagrees with the fifteenth century and supports the sixteenth. Its entry, listed at grade II since 29 March 1962, reads the street front as early nineteenth-century gault brick under slate, three storeys with a tall carriageway to the right, and the rear wing as much older, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, timber-framed and plastered, with some seventeenth-century panelling and many eighteenth-century fittings inside. So there is fabric of the century the house claims, standing behind a Georgian face, and the first date anyone publishes for drink sold here is still 1608.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/pickerel-cambridge-131234 | https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/cambridgeshire/pickerel-inn | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1473324 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1101465", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-pickerel-inn-cambridge/" }, { "slug": "the-pirates-house-savannah", "name": "The Pirates' House", "city": "Savannah", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1753, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1753 dates an inn nobody has traced a record of. Drink-led trade on these premises is documented from 1953, when Herb Traub and James Casey opened the restaurant, so the claim does not date continuous drinking here.", "trade_today": "A themed restaurant of fifteen dining rooms; its full service bar pours without a table and takes walk-ins.", "evidence_notes": "The 1753 is the house's own, and its own history page shows how the year is reached rather than cited: Savannah had become a seaport, the Trustees' Garden was being turned into a residential quarter, and so one of the first buildings there \"was naturally an inn & tavern for visiting sailors\". That is an inference, and no licence, deed, directory or newspaper has been traced for an inn here in the 1750s. What is documented is either side of it. The Herb House of 1734 was built to house the gardener of the Trustees' Garden, the first public agricultural experiment in America, and is often called the oldest standing building in Georgia. The restaurant is of 1953, when Herb Traub and James Casey opened a tea room in the derelict buildings that Mary Hillyer had saved from demolition eight years earlier; the upstairs room was a jazz club in the 1990s and is now the gift shop. Question one is answered by the house itself: its FAQ says reservations are \"not required, but strongly encouraged\" and that it keeps a full service bar with signature drinks, rum flights and local draught beer, and it publishes a drinks list of cocktails, wines by the glass and beer. So a visitor can walk in and be served a drink; what the 1753 does not do is date that trade.", "sources": "https://web.archive.org/web/2026/https://thepirateshouse.com/history/ | https://web.archive.org/web/2026/https://thepirateshouse.com/faq/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates%27_House | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1074193070", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-pirates-house-savannah/" }, { "slug": "the-purty-kitchen-dun-laoghaire", "name": "The Purty Kitchen", "city": "Dún Laoghaire", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1728, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub says it was founded in 1728 as a coaching inn and is Dún Laoghaire's oldest surviving premises; no independent document was found. Its licence is documented. Revenue's register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, standing as at 2 September 2026, carries a seven-day ordinary publican's licence under reference S0302, held by Vor Purty Taverns Limited, at 3/4 Old Dunleary Road with premises attached at No. 5, Salthill, Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin. No trading name is recorded against it, so the house is found in the register by the street and by the word Purty in the company's name rather than by the name over its door — and the class of licence is the full public-house one, so a drink may be had without a meal.", "sources": "https://www.purtykitchen.com/ | https://www.visitdublin.com/the-purty-kitchen | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-purty-kitchen-dun-laoghaire/" }, { "slug": "the-queens-inn-kingston", "name": "The Queen's Inn", "city": "Kingston", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1839, "earliest_documented": 1839, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The inn says it was established in 1839 by the Wolfe Island businessman Martin Staley and is one of Canada's oldest continually operating inns. A record for the trade has now been traced, and it names somebody else. The Kingston local-history project STONES, working on the city's Black history, sets out the career of George Mink, who announced in May 1838 that he had taken extensive premises at the head of Brock Street, lately the White Horse Inn, and who held a tavern licence every year from 1839 to 1848; the 1842 census for Ward 4 lists him as a tavern keeper and the 1847 assessment for St Lawrence Ward records him there, with land registry entries and a further public notice of September 1840. That is licensed tavern keeping at the address in the year the inn claims, which is what grade A asks for, so the grade moves up from tradition. It also complicates the founding story: the premises were a drinking house under an earlier name before Mink took them, the house was built in stages, and Martin Staley is not the man the licences are in. On the trade there is a plain answer: the inn's own site announces that it has officially reopened, with the restaurant and bar open from noon to ten Monday to Saturday and to eight on Sunday, and the hotel open Wednesday to Saturday. Coppers Pub and the Sports Tap & Grill are both inside the hotel. No heritage designation for the building has been traced.", "sources": "https://www.queensinn.ca/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://www.stoneskingston.ca/black-history/george-mink-part-one-queens-inn/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-queens-inn-kingston/" }, { "slug": "the-queens-dalkey", "name": "The Queens", "city": "Dalkey", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1745, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A gastro pub with its own bakery and coffee, licensed as a public house and open from nine in the morning.", "evidence_notes": "The 1745 is the house's own. Its earlier website told customers it had been serving the community since that year, and the Dublin press repeats it — 98FM, reporting the reopening on 16 July 2025, has the pub first opening its doors in 1745. No document for the year has been traced: no licensing record, no deed and no map, so the claim stands as tradition and the grade is C until somebody reads the Dublin licensing registers for Castle Street. What is documented is the present. The Revenue Commissioners' register of liquor licences renewed for 2025/2026, in a workbook saved on 2 September 2026, lists a Publican's Licence (7-Day Ordinary) at 12 Castle Street, Dalkey, reference S0314, held by Glebe Taverns Limited — a full public-house licence rather than a wine or restaurant licence, which is what settles that a drink may be had here without a meal. The pub's own site, copyright 2026, publishes hours from nine in the morning to half past eleven at night, and to half past midnight on Friday and Saturday, and describes the house as reimagined under Doherty Hospitality with a bakery of its own. One thing to know about the record rather than the pub: it shut early in 2025 for a sale and a refit and reopened that July, and OpenStreetMap still carries the door as a disused pub from a survey on 10 January 2025, which is the January before it reopened.", "sources": "https://www.98fm.com/whats-on/historic-queens-pub-in-dalkey-reopens-after-big-renovation-2178964 | https://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/queen-s-pub-in-dalkey-to-reopen-after-sale-for-3-5m-1.4575175 | https://data.gov.ie/dataset/register-of-renewed-liquor-licences | https://www.thequeensdalkey.ie/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/237237103 | https://web.archive.org/web/20240614062155/https://www.thequeens.ie/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-queens-dalkey/" }, { "slug": "the-queens-douglas", "name": "The Queens", "city": "Douglas", "country": "Isle of Man", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1854, "earliest_documented": 1854, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Registered Building No. 201 (Isle of Man), registered 20 September 2002", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Registered Building No. 201 on the Isle of Man's register, registered on 20 September 2002, describes the house as a public house built before 1826, probably first as cottages and stables for Castle Mona, and called the Queen's Hotel by 1854. That 1854 is the earliest record of drink-led trade traced here and is what the row is graded on. The register's own notice could not be read: every gov.im media link tried from this machine answers 404, including the one OpenStreetMap records against this building, and the Internet Archive was offline when a copy was looked for, so the register's wording is known from the English Wikipedia list that transcribes it with its numbers and dates. The printed Manx directories, transcribed on the Manx Note Book, carry the house forward from there. Thwaites's guide and directory of 1863 lists a house called the Queen, kept by Felix Bregazzi, on the Crescent among the hotels, inns and taverns of Douglas. Brown's directory of 1882 has the Queen's Hotel on the Crescent under Thomas Swift, Porter's of 1889 under Enoch Rowlinson, and the Douglas directory of 1892 under Edwin Lambert, whose street list puts it among the houses beyond Castle Drive. Brown's of 1894 gives it both ways under William Henry Metcalf: on the Crescent in the classified list, and on Queen's Promenade in the alphabetical one, which is what ties the Crescent entries to the address the house has now. Quiggin's directories of 1836 to 1852 name no Queen's in Douglas, only a separate Crescent Hotel; that fits a name first recorded in 1854 and proves nothing earlier either way. Question one is answered by the operator: Okell's publishes opening hours to eleven or midnight against a kitchen that stops at six, eight or nine depending on the day, and OpenStreetMap tags the building amenity=pub.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_Buildings_and_Conservation_Areas_of_the_Isle_of_Man | https://pubsandbars.im/venue/the-queens/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/77818835 | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/tg1863/doclass.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/bd1881/do_chtl.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/pd1889/do_cl.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/dd1892/dor_a.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/bd1894/do_class.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/bd1894/do_mz.htm | https://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/qg1841/dir_52.htm | https://okells.co.uk/pub/the-queens/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-queens-douglas/" }, { "slug": "the-radium-beerhall-johannesburg", "name": "The Radium Beerhall", "city": "Johannesburg", "country": "South Africa", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1929, "earliest_documented": 1942, "gap_years": 13, "building_year": 1929, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1929 is the local press's, and it dates a tea room: ShowMe says the Radium was established in 1929, and Wikipedia has the Kalil family's tea room taking a malt and liquor licence about 1942. It calls itself Johannesburg's oldest surviving bar and grill. We could not reach a working website for it in September 2026, but ShowMe reported in February 2025 that its doors remain open, answering the closure rumours directly.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radium_Beerhall | https://showme.co.za/a-living-legacy-of-one-of-jozis-oldest-bar/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-radium-beerhall-johannesburg/" }, { "slug": "the-river-inn-derry", "name": "The River Inn", "city": "Derry", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1684, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1684 is the house's own: it is in the name of its website, and the page there says the premises met the three conditions for an inn's licence at the time — leave to sell punch, beds for travellers and stabling for horses — and calls itself the oldest sited bar in Derry. We traced no licence, deed or directory entry behind the year, and no earlier record of drink sold at these numbers on Shipquay Street. Visit Derry gives 1684 in its listing, which is a second publisher for the claim rather than a second line of evidence. The story that the cellars held Wolfe Tone in 1798, on his way from Donegal to Dublin, is told the same way and traced no further. Nor is the fabric dated: the Northern Ireland register of historic buildings holds ten entries within sixty metres of the door and nothing at 34-38. That absence was searched again on 18 September 2026 in the Historic Environment Division's own map data, whose historic buildings layer was last edited on 10 September 2026 and is refreshed monthly. The neighbours it does hold are dated: 31-33 Shipquay Street at grade B+, built between 1740 and 1759 and formerly a store; 28, the Gift Box, and 30, Beethoven House, both between 1840 and 1859; 35-37 between 1900 and 1919; the Bank of Ireland at 20 between 1860 and 1879; the former Northern Bank at 39 between 1840 and 1859; 2 Bank Place between 1800 and 1819; 14 Shipquay Street, once the library, between 1820 and 1839; and 21, 23 and 27 recorded with no date at all. Nine of the ten carry a construction range, which is the control on the absence: the field the River Inn would be dated in is one the register fills on this street, so the blank at 34-38 is the register's and not the reading's. The nearest dated public house is 22-26, put up between 1820 and 1839 and recorded as a house before it was a bar. The other registers put the pub in company rather than dating it. Within eighty metres the Sites and Monuments Record holds a single entry, the late-medieval tower house recorded as O'Doherty's Castle or the Magazine, and the industrial heritage record holds a tobacco manufactory at the corner of Shipquay and Magazine Streets. The pub also stands inside the Derry area of archaeological potential drawn by the Derry Area Plan 2011, a boundary the dataset carries with no reference number of its own; it makes no judgement about any building within it and gives this one no date. Nothing at all appears in the areas of significant archaeological interest layer within eighty metres, and the same query shape at the same radius did return the area of archaeological potential, so that absence is real too. What is firm is that the doors are open — the Food Standards Agency inspected the premises as a pub, bar and nightclub on 26 March 2026 — and that the Doherty family ran the bar into the old Palace cinema next door to make the rooms it has now.", "sources": "http://www.riverinn1684.com/ | https://www.visitderry.com/food-and-drink/silver-street-the-river-inn-p718651 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/933668 | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/1/query?where=UPPER%28Address%29+LIKE+%27%25SHIPQUAY%25%27&outFields=*&f=html | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/6/query?where=LOCATION%3D%27DERRY%27&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/0/query?where=SMRNo%3D%27LDY014%3A032%27&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-river-inn-derry/" }, { "slug": "the-riverhead-riverhead", "name": "The Riverhead", "city": "Riverhead", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1857, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Scheduled historic heritage place, Auckland Unitary Plan schedule 14.1, number 00484, category B", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The owners' history says Thomas William Deacon established the house in 1857 and claims New Zealand's second-oldest liquor licence, which the Thistle Inn in Wellington also claims; no licensing record has been traced for either. The New Zealand Herald, reporting the tavern's sale on 10 October 2019, gives the same year — the house began trading in 1857 and is believed to be the country's oldest riverside tavern — which is a second publisher for the year rather than a second line of evidence, since it names no record behind it. Auckland's district plan schedules 33 York Terrace as historic heritage under the name Foresters' Arms (former) and Riverhead Hotel, category B, protecting the historic portion of the tavern building. That is an independent record of an old tavern on the site, and of an earlier name the pub no longer uses, but it fixes no date.", "sources": "https://www.theriverhead.co.nz/history | https://www.theriverhead.co.nz/ | https://unitaryplan.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/Images/Auckland%20Unitary%20Plan%20Operative/Chapter%20L%20Schedules/Schedule%2014.1%20Schedule%20of%20Historic%20Heritage.pdf | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/aucklander/news/riverhead-tavern-up-for-sale/IK4GQWPPGAQQLHJUGDF4I3BEC4/ | https://www.justice.govt.nz/tribunals/arla/register-of-licences-and-certificates/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-riverhead-riverhead/" }, { "slug": "the-seven-stars-london", "name": "The Seven Stars", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1602, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1244097), designated 14 May 1974 as Seven Stars Public House", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub carries 1602 in its name and sets out its own case for the date, arguing from the frame behind the later brick and stucco. Historic England agrees as far as it can: perhaps C17 in origin, dated 1602, with a C19 pub front, bar backs, counters and a corner fireplace of about 1900. That is fabric of the claimed age, which is a grade B; what is missing is any document of an alehouse here in 1602. Historic England's map service dates the listing itself — entry 1244097, grade II, designated on 14 May 1974 — and names the building Seven Stars Public House, which is the earliest naming of these premises as a drinking house that this page can point at, and it is 1974. The name may have drawn Dutch sailors, though the first Anglo-Dutch war was fifty years off.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1244097 | https://www.thesevenstars1602.co.uk/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/seven-stars-london-125532 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/423861", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-seven-stars-london/" }, { "slug": "the-spaniard-kinsale", "name": "The Spaniard", "city": "Kinsale", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1650, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the house in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. A search of two hundred metres around Scilly on 17 September 2026 returned eleven records — Prospect Villa, Raffeen, Nos 1 to 5 Scilly Terrace, an office of about 1800-40, the dry dock, the pier and a post box of about 1930 carrying the Free State's insignia — and nothing for the pub", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house's own history page says it was built on the foundations of a castle in or about 1650, that it was first called the Castle Bar and kept by the Coleman family of Scilly, and that it has been a pub almost ever since. The present name is recent by comparison: the owners took it in the 1960s for the Spanish commander at Kinsale in 1601. None of the seventeenth-century account has been traced to a record. The national inventory has now been searched rather than left open, and it holds nothing for the house: within two hundred metres of the pub the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage records eleven buildings and structures at Scilly — Prospect Villa, Raffeen, Nos 1 to 5 Scilly Terrace, an early nineteenth-century office, the dry dock, the pier and a post box of about 1930 with the Saorstát Éireann insignia — and no entry for the Spaniard. The surveyors walked this hill and did not write the pub down, so nothing independent dates its fabric, and the grade stays at C rather than B. What is not in doubt is the trade today: the bars keep their own hours from half past ten in the morning, separately from the restaurant upstairs, and the house is mapped as a pub.", "sources": "https://thespaniard.ie/home/history | https://web.archive.org/web/20260606103828/https://thespaniard.ie/bars/opening-hours | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/691063689 | https://web.archive.org/web/20260606110421/https://thespaniard.ie/home/history | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-8.51968%2C51.70327%2C-8.51388%2C51.70687&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=REG_NO%2CNAME%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-spaniard-kinsale/" }, { "slug": "the-split-crow-halifax", "name": "The Split Crow", "city": "Halifax", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1749, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The pub cites a licence granted by Governor Cornwallis to John Shippey on 17 July 1749 for the Spread Eagle at Salter and Water Streets, the first liquor licence issued in Nova Scotia, and Discover Halifax tells the same story without a document behind it. Locals nicknamed the sign the Split Crow. The pub trading now stands elsewhere in the downtown, on Granville Street, and revives the name rather than the building; no continuous line from Shippey's tavern is documented. Discover Halifax adds what happened in that first summer: on 26 August 1749 Peter Cartcel stabbed Abraham Goodsides after an argument at the tavern, and the trial that followed is described as the first jury trial in Canada under British law. Cartcel was hanged two days later.", "sources": "https://www.splitcrow.com/history/ | https://www.ontariopubs.ca/PDF/pubMagazine/pubmagazine_2014_13_web.pdf | https://discoverhalifaxns.com/food-drink/historic-pubs-that-tell-a-story/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-split-crow-halifax/" }, { "slug": "the-sun-inn-beverley", "name": "The Sun Inn", "city": "Beverley", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1530, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1310591), designated 2 July 1969 as The Sun Inn, Flemingate, with group value", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1530 is CAMRA's. The Hull and East Yorkshire branch entry, surveyed on 14 February 2026, calls the inn mid to late medieval, possibly mid-fifteenth-century, with some parts confirmed as dating to 1530, and names no record for any of it. The pub's own history page makes no such claim and is unusually careful: it quotes the Royal Commission's survey of Beverley in the 1980s, which found no surviving timber-framed building in the town earlier than 1400, Pevsner's 'possibly of 16th-17th century' for the jettied front, and the first-floor joists laid on edge rather than flat — a practice uncommon until well into the seventeenth century, which would put the earliest possible date at 1600. It offers instead that the house was the Tabard, an inn named in sixteenth-century documents on the granting of Minster lands, the Sun having been three dwellings on Minster land. Historic England listed the building grade II on 2 July 1969 as The Sun Inn, Flemingate, with group value. The full list entry was read on 17 September 2026 and it is firmer than this page had been reporting: it dates the house C16 and late C18, flatly, where this page had it as probably sixteenth century — a hedge that is ours and not the register's, and it is corrected here. Its description is of the first floor half-timbered with herringbone brick infill, jettied on plain corbels that are the joist ends, with two reglazed sashes and a small leaded casement above and an early nineteenth-century shop front below, its reeded frame and paterae still there behind a plain window, beside two late eighteenth-century sashes; the roof is new and the interior altered. So the grade here is a judgement rather than an absence. A flat C16 in a list entry of 1969 is documentation of a kind, and on its own it would carry a grade B; against it stand the pub's own argument from joists laid on edge, Pevsner's sixteenth-or-seventeenth, the Royal Commission on the town's surviving frames, and Historic England's own tree-ring analysis of the ground-floor and roof oak, published in 2020, in which neither the two-sample site sequence nor any ungrouped sample could be securely dated. When the body that dated the fabric later sampled the same timbers and got nothing, the safer reading is that the age is not established, and the grade stays C.", "sources": "https://www.suninnbeverley.co.uk/ | https://the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/sun-inn-beverley-180802 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1310591 | https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/216-2020 | https://suninnbeverley.co.uk/about-us/history-of-the-sun-inn/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/109530 | https://web.archive.org/web/2023/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1310591", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-sun-inn-beverley/" }, { "slug": "the-tobie-norris-stamford", "name": "The Tobie Norris", "city": "Stamford", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1280, "earliest_documented": 2005, "gap_years": 725, "building_year": 1280, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old building, younger pub: drinking use documented from 2005", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Two datings of the same house, and they are a long way apart. The operator and CAMRA put parts of the grade II* building at about 1280, with a thirteenth-century arch on the top floor. The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England surveyed number 12 St Paul's Street for its Stamford inventory and reads it differently: a hall-and-cross-wing house originating about 1500, a wing added behind the hall about 1600, and a new ashlar front built in two phases from 1663 by Toby Norris the younger, bellfounder, who lived and worked here. A lozenge panel on the east gable is inscribed for Toby and Susannah Norris in that year. The Commission also fixes the family a generation earlier than the pub's own telling: the hall had been ceiled by 1626, when the probate inventory of Toby Norris the elder described a chamber over it. Both readings stand. Whichever is right, the age belongs to the building: the house served as an RAF Association club from the 1950s and was converted to a pub only around 2005, so there is no early drinking history here and the house is outside the ranking.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/tobie-norris-stamford-157649 | https://www.kneadpubs.co.uk/our-pubs/the-tobie-norris | https://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/stamford/pp144-151 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/238900", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-tobie-norris-stamford/" }, { "slug": "the-village-tavern-long-grove", "name": "The Village Tavern", "city": "Long Grove", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1847, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the property in the National Register of Historic Places. A search of eight hundred metres around 135 Old McHenry Road on 17 September 2026 returned no listed property and no historic district", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The tavern calls itself, on its own front page, the oldest restaurant in continuous operation in Illinois, established in 1847; no founding document and no building date have been traced. Note the wording it chooses: restaurant in continuous operation, rather than a licence or a bar. The federal register has now been searched rather than left open, and it is empty here: within eight hundred metres of 135 Old McHenry Road the National Register of Historic Places holds no listed property and no historic district, so Long Grove's much-photographed village centre carries no federal designation and there is no register description to date these walls. What can be seen is a working village house — open-mic Mondays, named musicians on Wednesdays and Fridays, a billiard room downstairs open every day, and the Long Grove Apple Fest and a Hallowe'en night on its calendar for autumn 2026.", "sources": "https://www.villagetavernoflonggrove.org/ | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-village-tavern | https://www.wttw.com/playlist/2024/02/06/history-of-the-village-tavern | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-88.00885%2C42.17133%2C-87.98945%2C42.18573&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-88.00885%2C42.17133%2C-87.98945%2C42.18573&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-village-tavern-long-grove/" }, { "slug": "the-wheat-sheaf-tavern-toronto", "name": "The Wheat Sheaf Tavern", "city": "Toronto", "country": "Canada", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1849, "earliest_documented": 1849, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1849, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "City of Toronto Heritage Register; Part IV designation approved at committee 2025", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The City of Toronto's designation report for 667 King Street West sets out the paper trail: the 1845 assessment rolls show John and Bernard Short holding four lots at King and Bathurst, Bernard being an innkeeper and baker; the city directories show the lots tenanted by 1848 and the Wheat Sheaf built and let to Daniel Patterson by 1849; the building first appears on Goad's atlas in 1858, gaining a southern addition and its mansard roof around 1889. Heritage Planning records the original use as inn and tavern. The same report notes the 1995 bankruptcy and the January 1996 reopening, after which the rooms stopped being let, so 'continuous' needs that qualification.", "sources": "https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2025/03/toronto-oldest-bar-wheatsheaf-tavern-protection/ | https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2017/01/history-toronto-oldest-bar-wheat-sheaf/ | https://wheatsheaftavern.com/ | https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/pb/bgrd/backgroundfile-252578.pdf | https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=75dbb3ff-8281-4f03-9de2-bd1214761302&q=Wheat%20Sheaf", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-wheat-sheaf-tavern-toronto/" }, { "slug": "the-white-hart-inn-edinburgh", "name": "The White Hart Inn", "city": "Edinburgh", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Scotland", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1516, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1740, "building_year_source": "Historic Environment Scotland listing", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Category B listed (LB28938)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Historic Environment Scotland lists 30-40 Grassmarket, which takes in the White Hart, at category B, and its statement of special interest says records of the inn go back to 1516 — without naming one. So the 1516 is not the pub's alone, but nobody who publishes it points at a document. The tenement itself is about 1740, built by James Lithgow, damaged in a Zeppelin raid in 1916 and restored in 1994-5. CAMRA's Edinburgh branch has the cellarage from 1516 and the rest from 1740, which is the same story. Burns in 1791 and Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth in 1803 are well attested and appear in the listing; the Burke and Hare connection is tradition. Canmore, the same body's national record of the historic environment, adds a complication rather than a document. Its entry for 32-34 Grassmarket, site NT27SE 5401.00, made in February 2004 and last touched in January 2006, carries Dunlop's Court as an alternative name and classes the site as an inn of the fifteenth century and a public house of the eighteenth; the other halves of the same listed range, 30 Grassmarket and 36-40, are classed as tenements, shops and a restaurant of the eighteenth century. A period in a classification field is not a record of anyone drinking there, and Canmore and the statutory list are one body on two hosts, so this is one publisher saying two things rather than two publishers agreeing — and the two things do not agree, a fifteenth-century inn against a tenement of about 1740. The statutory entry is firm on its own facts: the title runs 30-40 (even numbers) Grassmarket, including White Hart Inn, category B, designated on 14 December 1970, with two further points added to the mapped range on 8 October 2024.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/white-hart-inn-edinburgh-151644 | https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/200407734-30-40-grassmarket-edinburgh | https://www.scotlandspubsandbars.co.uk/location/the-white-hart-inn/ | https://www.belhaven.co.uk/pubs/edinburgh/white-hart | https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB28938 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/121220 | https://inspire.hes.scot/arcgis/rest/services/CANMORE/Canmore_Points/MapServer/0/query?where=CANMOREID+IN+%28112369%2C254664%2C254665%29&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-white-hart-inn-edinburgh/" }, { "slug": "the-wrestlers-london", "name": "The Wrestlers", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1547, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1921, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA repeats the tradition of an establishment here in 1547, but no documentary source is given; the present building dates from 1921. The 'Swearing on the Horns' custom is said to date from 1623. Historic England's list was searched around the pub on 17 September 2026 and has nothing for it. Twenty-three entries stand within two hundred metres of 98 North Road, among them the Bull Inn a little way along the same street, the two blocks of Highpoint flats at grade I, and the group listing of 92, 94 and 96 North Road, whose text covers the three houses immediately south of the pub and stops short of it. We have not traced a listing entry for the pub itself, which is unsurprising for a building of that date, and it means there is no inspector's account of the fabric to test the 1547 against. That is an absence established by searching rather than assumed from silence.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/wrestlers-highgate-124852 | https://www.thewrestlershighgate.com | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/ZOdPfBS3aqqDYPUQ/ArcGIS/rest/services/National_Heritage_List_for_England_NHLE_v02_VIEW/FeatureServer/0/query?geometry=-0.1493%2C51.5743&geometryType=esriGeometryPoint&inSR=4326&distance=200&units=esriSRUnit_Meter&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=ListEntry%2CName%2CGrade%2CListDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/422532", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/the-wrestlers-london/" }, { "slug": "thistle-inn-wellington", "name": "Thistle Inn", "city": "Wellington", "country": "New Zealand", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1840, "earliest_documented": 1840, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1866, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Heritage New Zealand Category 1 Historic Place (List no. 1439)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Heritage New Zealand's list entry for the Thistle Inn, number 1439, a Category 1 historic place entered on 27 July 1988, was read on 17 September 2026 and settles the 1840. It records that the first Thistle Inn opened on town acre 515 in October 1840, that the section had become the property of Dudley Sinclair by ballot on 1 August 1839, and that the landlord was transferred by Sinclair in September 1841 — a documented inn at the year the house claims, which is what grade A asks for, so the grade moves up from B. The entry then explains the building: the 1840 inn burned down in 1866 and the present two-storey timber building was put up the same year, clad in rusticated weatherboards, with a west wing by the architect Thomas Turnbull added in 1896-97 and later modifications stripped back in a renovation of 2004. It notes the site's position on the old shoreline, a few yards from the sea until the reclamation of 1876, the sloping bar floor that sailors braced against, and Katherine Mansfield's 1907 story 'Leves Amores', set in the inn. Heritage New Zealand calls it one of the oldest hotels still operating in the country, not the oldest, and the claim to the second liquor licence issued in New Zealand is the inn's own and has not been traced to a licence record.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thistle_Inn | https://www.thistleinn.co.nz/the-thistle-inn | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/go-nz-where-is-new-zealands-oldest-pub/WBAGX5IHUNX2EOUVI5SLMTMY6Q/ | https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/75032447/thorndons-thistle-inn-still-a-wellington-bastion-of-booze-and-bonhomie-after-175-years---150-years-of-news | https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/1439/1439", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/thistle-inn-wellington/" }, { "slug": "thomas-moore-tavern-wexford", "name": "Thomas Moore Tavern", "city": "Wexford", "country": "Ireland", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1700, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The tavern's own account, archived in January 2024, dates the house to the seventeen-hundreds, when it was the King's Arms, and heads the page \"over 200 years of heritage\". It gives no year, and we have traced no record of either name, so 1700 stands here only as the first year of the century the pub itself names. This page also said there was no architectural inventory entry for the building, and that was wrong. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, read through its open data on 17 September 2026, has record 15502020 on the Corn Market, mapped within a metre of the tavern: an attached three-bay four-storey house on a rectangular plan with a shopfront to the ground floor, a red brick Flemish bond wall to the front and rendered elevations elsewhere, cut-granite window sills under red brick voussoirs, recorded as extant by 1840. The survey gives its range as 1700 to 1840, which is the surveyors saying the house was standing when the town was first mapped in detail and that it could be as early as the eighteenth century. So the inventory neither confirms nor refutes the seventeen-hundreds, but it exists, it describes a substantial brick house on this corner, and the page should not have said otherwise. The tavern is called after the poet Thomas Moore, whose mother Anastasia Codd came from Wexford; the local tradition that this was her family's house is one we have not been able to source.", "sources": "https://web.archive.org/web/20240117070359/https://www.thomasmooretavern.com/about-us/ | https://wexfordweekly.com/2026/09/04/live-music-listing-across-wexford-pubs-for-friday-saturday-and-sunday-2/entertainment/ | https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/NIAHBuildingsOpenData/FeatureServer/0/query?where=REG_NO%3D15502020&outFields=REG_NO%2CSTREET1%2CTOWN%2CORIGINAL_TYPE%2CDATEFROM%2CDATETO%2CLATITUDE%2CLONGITUDE%2CDESCRIPTION&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://wexfordweekly.com/2026/09/11/live-music-listing-across-wexford-pubs-this-friday-saturday-and-sunday/entertainment/ | https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/excise/licences/liquor-licences.aspx", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/thomas-moore-tavern-wexford/" }, { "slug": "tomneys-bar-moy", "name": "Tomney's Bar", "city": "Moy", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1765, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade B2 (Northern Ireland), record HB13/08/010", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1765 is not on the bar's own website, which says only that it is one of the oldest pubs in Ireland. The year is published in Mid Ulster District Council's business directory, in a sentence that otherwise repeats the pub's own words, so we read it as the house's claim at second hand; the Belfast Telegraph and Belfast Live have used it too, on sites we cannot read. No licence, deed or directory entry for 1765 has been traced, and no record of drink sold here earlier than the twentieth century. The chapter on the bar in Pubs of the North, reprinted by Beer Bore, has it at least three hundred years old on the evidence of a photograph hanging inside, and dates the last big refit to 1946. The Department for Communities lists the house at grade B2 and records both its former and its present use as a public house, without dating the fabric; the houses round the square at Moy are mostly mid eighteenth century, which is consistent with 1765 and is not a record of a bar. The register was read again on 18 September 2026, in the Department's own map data, last edited on 10 September 2026, and two things came of it. The statutory address spells the house Tamney's rather than Tomney's — entry HB13/08/010, grade B2, Tamney's Public House, 9-10 The Square, also called the Diamond — with the date of construction left empty. Every one of the thirty-four entries within a hundred and twenty metres of the bar has that field empty, while nine of the ten entries the same layer holds around the River Inn in Derry, read in the same hour, carry a construction range: the blank is how Moy was surveyed and not a fault in the reading. The square is well listed around it — the Village Bar at 24-25 and Ye Olde Oak Bar at 19 and 21 Killyman Street are grade B2 and B, the Sly Fox at 7 Killyman Street is grade B and was a house before it was a bar, and only St James's church on the Diamond is grade A. What does carry a date is the settlement: the Sites and Monuments Record holds Moy itself as a historic settlement of the seventeenth century, entry TYR062:015, the century before the bar's claimed 1765, and it says nothing about a licence. The industrial heritage, archaeological potential and significant archaeological interest layers hold nothing within a hundred and fifty metres of the bar, and the same query at the same radius returned the settlement record, which is the control on those three absences. Open: the Food Standards Agency inspected it on 15 October 2025, and the Tyrone Courier reported on 13 September 2024 that the council had approved a licensed garden room behind it.", "sources": "https://tomneys.com/ | https://www.midulstercouncil.org/business/business-directory/business-directory-listings/hospitality-entertainment/restaurants,-bars-cafes/tomneys-bar | https://www.beerbore.com/oldpubs/pon/2-tomneys-bar/ | https://www.tyronecourier.co.uk/home/2024/09/13/news/moy-pub-s-licensed-garden-room-plans-approved-after-acoustic-fence-addition-to-mitigate-noise-pollution-53390/ | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/198235 | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/1/query?where=HB_ref%3D%27HB13%2F08%2F010%27&outFields=*&f=html | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moy,_County_Tyrone | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/0/query?where=SMRNo%3D%27TYR062%3A015%27&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Historic_Environment_Division_GIS_Data/FeatureServer/1/query?where=HB_ref+LIKE+%27HB13%2F08%25%27&outFields=*&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/tomneys-bar-moy/" }, { "slug": "tri-sesira-belgrade", "name": "Tri Šešira", "city": "Belgrade", "country": "Serbia", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1864, "earliest_documented": 1904, "gap_years": 40, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A Skadarlija kafana with cooking and live music, open to two in the morning; it takes table bookings.", "evidence_notes": "The year is the house's own, printed as 1864 through its front page, and two publishers beyond the house now tell the same story. Serbian Wikipedia records a kafana opened in 1864 in a room that had held a hatter's workshop, whose three tin hats gave the house its name and its sign. The Stari Grad municipality, the Belgrade local authority Skadarlija stands in, publishes the same sequence on its own heritage pages and names the hatter — a master called Dimović, who hung the three tin hats at his door in place of a painted sign. Nothing documentary has been read behind 1864, so this is still a C. Two things the municipality adds are worth a reader's attention. It dates the kafana across the street, the Dva Jelena, to about 1862, which sits awkwardly against the encyclopaedia's description of the Tri Šešira as the oldest kafana in Skadarlija; the two houses stood in different quarters of the city, divided by the open drain that ran down the middle of the lane and turned into a torrent in heavy rain, this one on the Dorćol side and the Dva Jelena on the Palilula. And it states that the oldest house still standing in the street, known for its owner Vladan Štiha and built before 1878, was joined to this kafana at a later rebuilding. The earliest dated occasion anyone puts inside these rooms is 1904: the daily Politika records that its first issue, printed on 25 January that year, was celebrated here, and that by some accounts the paper itself was thought of at one of these tables. That is the newspaper's own memory of its founding rather than a document read here, and it is forty years younger than the claim. Politika also dates the name Tri Šešira to 1872 rather than to the hatter's sign of 1864, which the municipality does not. The lane was first drawn on a plan of Belgrade in 1854 and officially named Skadarska in 1872. Trading in September 2026: the house publishes hours of eleven in the morning until two at night, seven days a week, and OpenStreetMap carries the same hours. Nobody we can read says in words that a visitor may drink here without eating, and the house takes table bookings, so that question is left open on the page; the late hours and a drinks card of its own are why it is published rather than held back.", "sources": "https://www.trisesira.rs | https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%A2%D1%80%D0%B8_%D1%88%D0%B5%D1%88%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0 | https://www.starigrad.org.rs/bastina/skadarlija/ | https://www.politika.rs/scc/clanak/389478/Pogledi/Tri-sesira-kultna-kafana", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/tri-sesira-belgrade/" }, { "slug": "u-fleku-prague", "name": "U Fleků", "city": "Prague", "country": "Czechia", "nation": "", "type": "hospoda", "claimed_founded": 1499, "earliest_documented": 1499, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within Prague Heritage Reserve (UNESCO World Heritage Site)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house on Křemenec is first named in writing in 1430, when it belonged to a dyer called Petr. The 1499 the brewery gives is the year Vít Skřemenec and his wife Dorota bought the house called At the Two Magpies and began the malting trade in it — a maltster's purchase rather than a tavern licence, which is the house's own wording on its own history page. Brewing has gone on here since, the dark 13-degree lager from 1843, and the name from Jakub Flekovský, who bought the business in 1762. The state took it in 1949; the Brtník family, who had owned it since 1920, got the restaurant back in 1991 and the brewery a year later, and founded the brewing museum in 1999 for the five-hundredth anniversary.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Fleků | https://ufleku.cz/ | https://dbpedia.org/page/U_Fleků | https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivovar_U_Flek%C5%AF | https://ares.gov.cz/ekonomicke-subjekty?ico=25677284 | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:bf38fa70-3c1d-11e7-97e2-005056825209 | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:eea1ef68-01af-4e96-8a3a-8fe7d3bf9005", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/u-fleku-prague/" }, { "slug": "u-krale-brabantskeho-prague", "name": "U Krále Brabantského", "city": "Prague", "country": "Czechia", "nation": "", "type": "hospoda", "claimed_founded": 1375, "earliest_documented": 1884, "gap_years": 509, "building_year": 1629, "building_year_source": "Czech register of cultural monuments, entry 39185/1-653, read in the wikitext of the Czech Wikipedia list of monuments for the upper Lesser Town", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Cultural monument 39185/1-653 in the Czech register, listed 22 December 1964", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Drink-led trade in the house is documented only from the end of the nineteenth century, so the 1375 over the door dates neither a licence nor a counter.", "trade_today": "A show tavern: medieval feasts with jugglers, fire and swordplay from seven each evening, and a bar open from eleven for anyone who only wants a beer.", "evidence_notes": "The 1375 is the tavern's own — \"Otevřeno od roku 1375\" stands on its front page — and CzechTourism repeats it on Kudy z nudy, where the house is called one of the oldest almost continuously open inns in Prague. Prague City Tourism calls it one of the oldest pubs in the city but names no year, and nobody cites a record. Pražský deník, writing on 8 May 2021, is the most careful of them: it reads the inscription on number 15, that here from time out of mind stands the sign of the King of Brabant, and says 1375 is the year traditionally given for the founding. That is a description of a tradition, not of a document. The record is later and firmer. The Czech register of cultural monuments enters the burgher house as 39185/1-653, protected since 22 December 1964, and dates it to a rebuilding after the mid-sixteenth-century fire and another of 1629–1633, with a street front of the late nineteenth century. The Czech Wikipedia account, which follows Lukáš Berný's history of the Lesser Town's pubs, says the inn in it probably began at the end of the nineteenth century and had a run of landlords who made little of it: Antonín Hrdlička worked here, Václav Petráň bought the house from him in 1884, and on 9 December that year Hrdlička came back to rob him and killed him instead. Prague's own trade directories, digitised by the Czech National Library, are the first primary record of the sign that anyone here has read, and they are of 1901: the city address book for that year lists Antonie Hrzanová as the holder of the innkeeping trade at the sign of the King of Brabant in Thunovská, and repeats her in its roll of innkeepers by house sign. Two details in it want saying. The directory gives the number as Thunovská 18 where the house trades today at number 15, and the German-language trade address book of the Protectorate for 1939 has \"U Krále Brabantského\", kept by Václav Plic, at Thunovská 15 — so either the business moved a few doors or the street was renumbered between the two, and nothing traced from here settles which. The other is a trap for anyone hunting the name: a second house of the same sign stood in Žižkov, in Husova ulice, and the chronicle of royal Prague printed in 1903 lists it there. The story of Wenceslas IV drinking here incognito with his executioner was, on the Czech encyclopaedia's account, probably invented by Emanuel Klucker, who took the beer hall on in 1912. In the 1960s and 1970s the rooms were one of the Lesser Town meeting places of the Czech underground; new owners rebuilt them after 2007 into the medieval feast staged here now. So the house is old and the tavern is not, which is a C, and drink-led trade documented from 1884 keeps it out of the Top 100. Nobody has to eat to drink here: the rooms open at eleven and the show does not begin until seven.", "sources": "https://www.krcmabrabant.cz/ | https://www.kudyznudy.cz/aktivity/stredoveka-krcma-u-krale-brabantskeho-v-praze | https://prague.eu/en/objevujte/krcma-u-krale-brabantskeho/ | https://prazsky.denik.cz/zpravy-region/krcma-u-krale-brabantskeho-hostinec-podmirak-smrt-proslule-prazske-podniky/ | https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Kr%C3%A1le_brabantsk%C3%A9ho | https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seznam_kulturn%C3%ADch_pam%C3%A1tek_na_Mal%C3%A9_Stran%C4%9B_%E2%80%93_Horn%C3%AD_malostransk%C3%BD_obvod | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2504447324 | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:e8c347eb-d8bd-48d8-8bd2-40fdeeab9f2a | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:119c28e0-ee3d-11e4-a794-5ef3fc9bb22f", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/u-krale-brabantskeho-prague/" }, { "slug": "u-zlateho-tygra-prague", "name": "U Zlatého tygra", "city": "Prague", "country": "Czechia", "nation": "", "type": "hospoda", "claimed_founded": 1816, "earliest_documented": 1835, "gap_years": 19, "building_year": 1713, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Within Prague Heritage Reserve (UNESCO)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1816 beer-hall date comes from the pub's own history and no independent record for it was found. Prague City Tourism's account of the house — Gothic, its tower raised in 1514, the walking-tiger relief in place since 1702, renamed At the Golden Tiger by Jan František Lehr in 1786 after being At the Black Lion from 1523 — records a refreshment house here in 1835, Šoch's café, whose regulars included Tyl, Mácha and Sabina. Czech Radio, writing in 2007, put the pub's age at over 150 years, which fits a mid-19th-century start better than 1816. Two Czech publishers were read on 18 September 2026 through the National Library's digital library, and both describe this house without mentioning 1816. František Ruth's topographical chronicle of royal Prague, published in 1903 and 1904, takes the Husova street house by house and gives number 228, with the orientation number 17, as the house at the Golden Tiger — called at the digger in 1429, when it belonged to a cutler named Hanuš. Šoch's café, he writes, was here in the 1840s, and Tyl and Filípek were among those who came. The Prague daily Pokrok of 4 April 1877, recalling the years before 1848, names the same café in the same house, prints its conscription number as 228 in the Old Town, and tells its readers what stood there as they read: a Pilsner beer hall. So a drinking house of exactly the present kind is on record at this address in 1877, from a publisher with no interest in the claim, and the two Czech accounts put the café a decade later than Prague City Tourism does — in the 1840s rather than 1835. Neither dates the tiger over the door. The Czech heritage registers were tried again the same night by four routes and none of them answered, so the state listing this house is recorded as holding is still not something a reader can be shown.", "sources": "https://www.uzlatehotygra.cz/en/history/ | https://www.uzlatehotygra.cz/en/ | https://prague.eu/en/objevujte/house-at-the-golden-tiger-u-zlateho-tygra/ | https://english.radio.cz/pub-u-zlateho-tygra-serving-great-and-good-and-regular-joes-over-150-years-8605129 | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:be21e3c0-14ce-11e7-94e5-001018b5eb5c | https://kramerius5.nkp.cz/uuid/uuid:d51bff60-0e94-11e7-bc93-005056822549", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/u-zlateho-tygra-prague/" }, { "slug": "union-oyster-house-boston", "name": "Union Oyster House", "city": "Boston", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1826, "earliest_documented": 1854, "gap_years": 28, "building_year": 1716, "building_year_source": "https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/03000645_text", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "National Historic Landmark, designated 27 May 2003, and entered on the National Register of Historic Places the same day (ref. 03000645); on the Register since 1973 within the Blackstone Block historic district, an area entry that describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1826 dates an oyster house rather than a drinking house: the business says itself that it started serving food that year, and the landmark nomination records a specialty store to 1826 and a restaurant after it. Drink at the counter is recorded from 1854 and the bar room that pours today opened in August 1983.", "trade_today": "A seafood restaurant on the Freedom Trail; drink is served at the semicircular oyster bar and in the Union Bar beside it.", "evidence_notes": "The 1826 is documented and is not a drinking house, which is why the grade here is C and the ranking leaves the house out. The nomination that made this a National Historic Landmark on 27 May 2003 sets out the sequence plainly: a dwelling in the early 1700s, a specialty store from 1742, and a restaurant from 1826, when Hawes Atwood opened his oyster house on the ground floor on 7 October. The house's own wording is the same — it says it started serving food in 1826. The oyster bar, a semicircular oak counter over soapstone with cast iron stall fittings, has stood in its original position since the alterations of that period, and the nomination calls it and the booths the only known survivors of their kind in the United States. Drink at the counter comes into the record next, in an advertisement of 1854 that offers prime oysters by the bushel at the old noted house of W. and H. Atwood and \"their liquors\" at sixty-two and a half cents a gallon — a price for carrying drink away rather than for a glass at the bar. Daniel Webster, a regular of the 1840s and 1850s, is reputed to have taken a tumbler of brandy and water with each half dozen oysters. The bar room that trades today, The Union Bar, opened in August 1983 in the north building. As for drinking here now, the city's licensing board records an active all-alcohol licence at the house with no condition tying a drink to a meal, of the kind it attaches to some Boston restaurants, and the Boston Globe's sister site described trays of martinis going out across the floor when it visited for the two hundredth anniversary in July 2026. Read at first hand rather than summarised, the nomination is more careful about the building than this page had been. It reviews five datings and rejects four — Frank C. Brown's 1704, the Historic American Buildings Survey's \"built prior to 1714\", Donlyn Lyndon's about 1715 with a Marshall Street addition of 1724, offered with no justification, and the Boston Landmarks Commission's about 1730 in its Blackstone Block nomination of 1983 — and accepts instead Arthur Krim's work in the registry of deeds. The conveyance of 13 September 1717, from the tailor John Savell to John Green, describes a newly built brick messuage on Union Street; the deed of 1713 had sold the ground for fifty pounds and mentioned no dwelling, and the deed of 1741 sold it for eighteen hundred. So the house stood by 13 September 1717 and is unlikely to be much older. The chain runs John Cosser in 1679, Savell in 1713, the Reverend James Pierpoint in 1717, Phillips Chamberlain in February 1741 and Thomas Stoddard in 1742, each with a deed book and page. Two dates this page carried need reading the other way about. The house of 1851 at 37 Union Street and the house of 1916 at 14-22 Marshall Street were built in those years but were no part of the oyster house then: the Milano family bought the northern one in 1982 and the southern one in January 1995 and cut openings through the party walls, and the nomination counts only the original building as contributing to the landmark. The family trade is older than the house's own year, too — the Boston directories for 1818 to 1827 have a Stephen Atwood keeping an oyster shop at 8 Water Street from 1818, eight years before his son Hawes opened here. One earlier designation belongs on the record. The house went on the National Register in 1973 inside the Blackstone Block historic district, a 2.3-acre area the nomination describes as the largest unwidened fragment of Boston's original seventeenth-century street plan, its streets settled in their present lines by about 1676 and Union Street formally named in 1708. That district entry draws a boundary and describes no individual building; we have not traced its own reference number or the day it was listed, and the individual entry of 27 May 2003 is the one that dates and describes this house.", "sources": "https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/03000645_text | https://www.boston.com/food/restaurants/2026/07/03/union-oyster-house-americas-oldest-restaurant/ | https://data.boston.gov/dataset/liquor-licenses | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Oyster_House | https://www.unionoysterhouse.com/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1532195818", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/union-oyster-house-boston/" }, { "slug": "victory-hotel-brisbane", "name": "Victory Hotel", "city": "Brisbane", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1855, "earliest_documented": 1855, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1855, "building_year_source": "https://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/citation/victory-hotel_1990.pdf", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "unconfirmed", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Local heritage place on the Brisbane Heritage Register since 1 January 2009, on a citation of January 2008", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "This one rests on a licence. Brisbane City Council's heritage citation, written in January 2008 for a listing that took effect on 1 January 2009, records that Michael Costello applied in August 1855 for a publican's licence for the Prince of Wales Hotel and that it was granted on 4 September 1855, and quotes his first advertisement in the Moreton Bay Courier offering a large and conveniently arranged house for boarders and families that would be second to none in the colony. The citation reads the 1862 photographic panorama of Brisbane as showing that the hotel of 1855 is the basis of the building standing now, and a photograph of the 1864 flood in the John Oxley Library shows the Prince of Wales on its corner. It stood in Frogs Hollow, the low marshy quarter by the wharves, and drew its trade from the working men of the warehouses around it — the citation is careful about which room they drank in, the public bar rather than the private bar kept for residents. Richard Gailey, the architect Brisbane hotels went to, added to it in 1882 and again in 1887, and the name changed to Victory in 1921, thought to be for the end of the war. Of thirty-two hotel sites in the central business district in 1951 seven survive, and the council calls this the oldest of them. Fire gutted it on 27 July 2008; it was rebuilt close to its old form and reopened on 9 March 2009. What the licence of 1855 did not have behind it was a record of the trade continuing, and the State Library of Queensland's index of licensed victuallers supplies one for the years it covers. The index transcribes the lists of licence holders printed in the Queensland Government Gazette between July 1900 and July 1914, with the volume, number, date and page of each entry, and a Prince of Wales Hotel in the Brisbane licence district holds a licence in every list from the one gazetted on 29 January 1901 to the one gazetted on 5 November 1913. That first list carries two names for a Prince of Wales in the district, Michael Hartigan and J. V. Mullen; from 1903 the index labels Hartigan's house as the one at Nundah. The licensees of the unlabelled house run Sarah Balls from 1902 to 1904, Archibald Hill Robertson in 1905, Thomas O'Brien in 1906 and 1907, Frederick W. Coupland in 1908, Edward Flynn from 1909 to 1911 and Anna Underhill from 1911 to November 1913. Five of those entries note that the house had two bars, which is the arrangement the council's citation describes. Two cautions on reading it. The index records the licence district and not the street, so this is the city house rather than another of the name on the index's own distinction — a second Prince of Wales at Nundah is entered under that locality throughout — and not on an address. And the index begins in July 1900 and ends in July 1914, so it is silent about the years on either side rather than empty of them.", "sources": "https://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/citation/victory-hotel_1990.pdf | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Hotel | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-16/the-victory-hotel-to-reopen-in-march-with-new-operator/101985728 | https://theshout.com.au/australian-hotelier/athena-hospitality-saves-brisbanes-victory-hotel-from-closure/ | https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/49748193 | https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/state-library-of-queensland-licensed-victuallers-index", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/victory-hotel-brisbane/" }, { "slug": "warren-tavern-boston", "name": "Warren Tavern", "city": "Boston", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1780, "earliest_documented": 1783, "gap_years": 3, "building_year": 1780, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "No individual entry in the National Register of Historic Places. The tavern stands inside the Town Hill District (National Register reference 73000850), listed on 10 May 1973 and bounded roughly by Rutherford Avenue and Main and Warren Streets; that entry is for the district and describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Eliphelet Newell built the tavern soon after the British burned Charlestown, and King Solomon's Lodge, whose charter Paul Revere signed, met here in 1783-84. Tavern use lapsed about 1813 and the building served as a bakery, a club and a warehouse; the Boston Redevelopment Authority restored it in 1971 and it reopened as a tavern in 1972, so the trade is not continuous even though the house is. The tavern itself claims 1780 and the title of oldest tavern in Massachusetts. The federal register has now been searched by position rather than by name, which is what this page had not done: the tavern has no entry of its own, and its corner falls inside the Town Hill District, listed on the National Register on 10 May 1973 and bounded roughly by Rutherford Avenue and Main and Warren Streets. A district listing is a finding about a neighbourhood. It names no building, dates none, and so it neither supports nor disturbs the 1780; what carries the grade here is still the lodge meeting of 1783. A drinker can sit at the bar for a pint without taking a table, which the house says in its own words.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Tavern | https://historyofmassachusetts.org/warren-tavern-history/ | https://www.warrentavern.com/history | https://www.warrentavern.com/ | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-71.06331%2C42.37404%2C-71.06291%2C42.37434&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CAddress%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/warren-tavern-boston/" }, { "slug": "weis-stue-ribe", "name": "Weis' Stue", "city": "Ribe", "country": "Denmark", "nation": "", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1600, "earliest_documented": 1830, "gap_years": 230, "building_year": 1600, "building_year_source": "https://trap.lex.dk/Weis'_Stue,_Ribe", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Listed building (fredet), registered by the Danish agency for palaces and culture", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1600 dates the timber frame, not the trade. The earliest year traced for public drinking here is 1830, when Søren Andersen Weis took out a burgess's licence in Ribe as a distiller and publican, which is well after 1750, so the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.", "trade_today": "A restaurant with rooms above; the tap room and the watch room are kept as they were fitted in 1704.", "evidence_notes": "The Danish agency for palaces and culture registers this house as listed, and its account — published through the national encyclopaedia — dates the five western bays of the front to about 1600, with three eastern bays added some decades later, all on the foundations of a medieval house. An article by K. H. Rosenstand in Ripenser-Bladet for December 1917, transcribed on RibeWiki, is the second reading and the more useful one. Rosenstand, who chaired the committee that bought the house for the town four years earlier, writes that neither the builder nor the building year is known but that much points to the reign of Christian IV, and he sets out the trade: Cecilie Marie Thun, a coppersmith's wife, sold the house in 1762 to Anders Andersen Weis, a linen merchant who died in 1795; his son Søren Andersen Weis took a burgess's licence as a linen merchant on 8 December 1796; farmers coming in on market days to borrow his corn measure got into the habit of buying drink from him to go with their food, and in 1830 he took out a further licence as a distiller and publican, without having sat the examination distillers were supposed to sit. His son Anders Pedersen Weis had the house from 1833 and took his own publican's licence in 1859. The hotel's history page gives the same 1830 licence in its own words. That 1830 is the first year anyone can point at for drink sold to the public here, and it is what this row now records. The board over the street door carries the name Søren Andersen Weis together with the year 1704, but the two halves belong to different owners: the Thuns held the house in 1704, the Weisses did not buy it until 1762, and the hotel's own account says the dated timber was found during the restoration that followed the town's purchase. The family gave up in 1913-14, the town bought the house for 30,000 kroner and restored it under the architect Borch, and it went back to use as a tap room afterwards. Nobody we can read says in words that a visitor may drink here without eating, and the house takes table bookings, so that question is left open.", "sources": "https://trap.lex.dk/Weis'_Stue,_Ribe | https://www.hoteldagmar.dk/weis-stue/ | https://ribewiki.dk/da/Weis_Stue | https://www.hoteldagmar.dk/weis-stue/om-weis-stue/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/weis-stue-ribe/" }, { "slug": "white-horse-tavern-newport", "name": "White Horse Tavern", "city": "Newport", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1673, "earliest_documented": 1687, "gap_years": 14, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 3 February 1972 (ref. 72000032); contributing property in the Newport Historic District National Historic Landmark", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A dining-led tavern; a small first-come bar and three tables on the ground floor take walk-ins for a drink", "evidence_notes": "The National Register nomination, written by Antoinette Downing of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission on 25 July 1971 and entered on 3 February 1972, puts it plainly: probably built before 1673, the house was acquired that year by William Mayes, served first as a private residence and soon became an inn, and Mayes had been granted a liquor licence as early as 1687. The sign of the White Horse was first hung by Jonathan Nichols, who owned the tavern in 1730. So the fabric is of the claimed age and the earliest record of drink sold is 1687. Use has not been continuous: the Preservation Society of Newport County rescued and restored the building in the 1950s and owned it at the time of listing. The nomination cites Downing and Scully's Architectural Heritage of Newport, Rhode Island, and calls the tavern the oldest still in operation in America.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Tavern_(Newport,_Rhode_Island) | https://whitehorsenewport.com/ | https://www.discovernewport.org/listing/the-white-horse-tavern/1686/ | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/72000032_text | https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/68000001_text", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/white-horse-tavern-newport/" }, { "slug": "white-horse-tavern-new-york-city", "name": "White Horse Tavern", "city": "New York City", "country": "United States", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1880, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "No individual entry in the National Register of Historic Places. The corner stands inside the Greenwich Village Historic District (National Register reference 79001604), listed on 18 June 1979 and bounded roughly by West 13th Street, St Luke's Place, University Place and Washington Street; that entry is for the district and describes no individual building", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Wikipedia and the bar give 1880, when it opened as a longshoremen's bar; the literary reputation dates from the 1950s, and the bar was sold and renovated in 2019. No primary licence has been read. The federal register has now been searched by position, which this page had not done: the house has no entry of its own, and 567 Hudson Street falls inside the Greenwich Village Historic District, listed on the National Register on 18 June 1979. That is a finding about a large part of a borough rather than about this corner — the entry names no individual building and dates none — so nothing in it tests the 1880, and the year stands as the bar's own. Where the district helps is in what it prevents: the frame house on the corner is protected from demolition and alteration, which is part of why a longshoremen's bar of the 1880s still looks like one.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Tavern_(New_York_City) | https://www.whitehorsetavern1880.com/ | https://mapservices.nps.gov/arcgis/rest/services/cultural_resources/nrhp_locations/MapServer/1/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-74.00603%2C40.73568%2C-74.00563%2C40.73598&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=NRIS_Refnum%2CRESNAME%2CAddress%2CCertDate&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/43nn-pn8j.json?camis=50095038", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/white-horse-tavern-new-york-city/" }, { "slug": "whites-tavern-belfast", "name": "White's Tavern", "city": "Belfast", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "Northern Ireland", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1630, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "We have traced no entry for the tavern in the Northern Ireland register of historic buildings. A search of three hundred metres of the old town around Winecellar Entry on 17 September 2026 returned forty-six entries, among them the Northern Whig at 2-10 Bridge Street (HB26/50/060), the First Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street and the Northern Bank on Waring Street, and nothing for the tavern; the register holds no entry at all for Winecellar Entry, and its four High Street entries are St George's Church, the Bank of Ireland, Transport House and 37-43 High Street", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "Old site, younger pub: a wine merchant's rebuild about 1790, a wine and spirit warehouse in the mid 19th century, a public house only from the late 19th or early 20th, and named White's Tavern in 1962", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The tavern says Belfast's first tavern licence was granted on this site in 1630, and no licence record has been traced; the planning record calls it local tradition. What that record does document is the rest: the building standing now is largely the work of the wine merchant Valentine Jones, who rebuilt about 1790, and is known historically as Washington House. By the middle of the nineteenth century Neil & White ran it as a wine and spirit warehouse, with part of it used as the Oyster Rooms by the fishmonger John Walker, and the premises moved from wholesale trade to a public house only in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The name White's Tavern dates from 1962. It was restored in the 1980s, held by Beannchor and the Merchant Hotel Group, and bought by the Clover Group in 2019, which restored the bar counter to its original height and added the Oyster Room, the beer hall, the store and the garden. The statutory register has now been searched as well, and it holds nothing for the house: within three hundred metres of Winecellar Entry the Northern Ireland register of historic buildings lists forty-six entries, including the Northern Whig round the corner on Bridge Street and the eighteenth-century Northern Bank on Waring Street, and there is no entry for the tavern, for Winecellar Entry or for 14-18 High Street. So the dating on this page is the planning record's and not a designation's, which is worth a reader knowing.", "sources": "https://www.whitestavernbelfast.com/ | https://boozingabroad.com/oldest-and-best-belfast-pubs-ireland/ | https://rebelatlas.com/destinations/europe/ireland/where-is-irelands-oldest-pub-10-historic-pubs-with-a-claim-to-the-title/ | https://www.planbelfast.com/project/whites-tavern | https://services2.arcgis.com/BdBkthNLO9mzGAMO/arcgis/rest/services/Listed_Buildings_Centroid/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&geometry=-5.93074%2C54.59873%2C-5.92610%2C54.60143&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=4326&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&outFields=HB_Ref_No%2CAddress%2CCurrentGra&returnGeometry=false&f=html | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/59353 | https://whitestavernbelfast.com/tavern/", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/whites-tavern-belfast/" }, { "slug": "woolpack-hotel-parramatta", "name": "Woolpack Hotel", "city": "Parramatta", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1796, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The hotel says on its own front page that it was founded and licensed in 1796, and it is often counted among the first ten houses licensed in the colony. The sources do not agree on who granted it, crediting Hunter or Phillip, who had left the colony in 1792, and the trade press reports that the provenance cannot be confirmed. The business was rebuilt across George Street in the 1890s under a different name, so neither the site nor the building is the one the licence would have covered. The hotel is not on the New South Wales State Heritage Register. What it is today is plain enough from its own pages: a main bar with a wine and cocktail list, a sports and betting bar with an outdoor courtyard, and a grill kitchen open seven days from half past eleven to half past nine.", "sources": "https://www.woolpackhotel.com.au/ | https://timegents.com/2017/09/19/road-trip-to-parramatta/ | https://pubtic.com.au/the-matter-of-australias-oldest-pub/ | https://www.gdaypubs.com.au/state-histories.html | https://dictionaryofsydney.org/building/woolpack_hotel_i", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/woolpack-hotel-parramatta/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-bell-steelyard-woodbridge", "name": "Ye Olde Bell & Steelyard", "city": "Woodbridge", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1540, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1550, "building_year_source": "Historic England listing", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade I listed (NHLE 1031046)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "CAMRA's record gives the date, saying the pub dates from about 1540. Historic England, which lists the building Grade I, reasons from the street: New Street was constructed in 1550, and that is the probable date of the Bell. Ten years is well within a generation, so the fabric supports the claim. The steelyard that swings over the pavement — a beam weighing machine for hay waggons, still in place and used within living memory in 1947 — is probably early C17 and not part of the original build.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1031046 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-bell-steelyard-woodbridge-183075 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1543138 | https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11364702", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-bell-steelyard-woodbridge/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-beverlie-canterbury", "name": "Ye Olde Beverlie", "city": "Canterbury", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1570, "earliest_documented": 1740, "gap_years": 170, "building_year": 1570, "building_year_source": "Historic England list entry 1065785, which says the house is said to be of the same date as the 1570 almshouses; only the crow-stepped west gable is visibly of that period and the front is 18th-century", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed, first listed 3 December 1949 (list entry 1065785)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1570 is not the pub's own date. CAMRA gives it, crediting the house to Sir Roger Manwood, who built it in 1570 along with the almshouses next door, and Historic England lists the inn Grade II as said to be of the same date as those almshouses; inn and almshouses are listed as a group. The listing also narrows the claim, because the only fabric of that period visible from outside is the crow-stepped gable in the west front, the front itself being 18th-century. Use as an inn is recorded from 1740, when the house was known as the Hospital; it became the Beverly in 1839 and took its present name in the 1950s.", "sources": "https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-beverlie-canterbury-132690 | https://kent.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=287037 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1065785 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1760715", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-beverlie-canterbury/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-cheshire-cheese-london", "name": "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1538, "earliest_documented": 1680, "gap_years": 142, "building_year": 1667, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1064662), first listed 4 January 1950", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the pub's own: its about page says a pub has stood here since 1538 and that the medieval house was rebuilt in about 1667 after the Great Fire. Historic England finds no evidence for 1538; the earliest reference to the Cheshire Cheese is a broadside ballad published in 1680, consistent with rebuilding after the fire. The statutory list entry, read on 17 September 2026, puts a date on the fabric for the first time on this page. Entry 1064662, grade II, first listed on 4 January 1950 as No 145 Fleet Street, calls the house late seventeenth-century and very much altered: a yellow brick front to Fleet Street probably of the later eighteenth century, remodelled and heightened in the nineteenth, four storeys and dormers over a shop, with a longer elevation of apparently mid- to later eighteenth-century brickwork down Wine Office Court. The oldest thing it names is the late seventeenth-century vaulted cellar beneath the small courtyard, which is where the pub's own remark that the cellars may be older finds its only support. Nothing in the entry reaches 1538.", "sources": "https://heritagecalling.com/2025/09/25/what-is-the-oldest-historic-pub-in-london/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-cheshire-cheese-london-156637 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Cheshire_Cheese | https://www.ye-olde-cheshire-cheese.co.uk/about | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1064662 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/293911", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-cheshire-cheese-london/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-dog-and-partridge-tutbury", "name": "Ye Olde Dog and Partridge", "city": "Tutbury", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1485, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "B", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1188498), designated 17 September 1952 and amended 26 April 1984, as Dog and Partridge Hotel", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "This is a pub that undersells itself. Neither its own pages nor its pub company make an age claim, but Historic England lists it Grade II* as originally a coaching inn, probably of late C15 to early C16 date, timber-framed with close studding on a stone base and C18 brick wings; CAMRA calls it a Tudor coaching inn. Fabric of the claimed age is documented and the building was an inn from the start, so the grade is B. Historic England's map service dates the listing: entry 1188498, grade II*, first designated on 17 September 1952 and amended on 26 April 1984, under the name Dog and Partridge Hotel. What is not yet traced is a licence, a court roll or a rental naming a house of drink here.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188498 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/dog-partridge-tutbury-123990 | https://www.chefandbrewer.com/pubs/staffordshire/dog-and-partridge | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1247564", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-dog-and-partridge-tutbury/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-dolphin-inne-derby", "name": "Ye Olde Dolphin Inne", "city": "Derby", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "inn", "claimed_founded": 1530, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (NHLE 1228932)", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The 1530 is Visit Derby's, whose listing calls the Dolphin the city's oldest pub, dating back to 1530; the pub has no website of its own recorded, and CAMRA says only that it claims to be Derby's oldest and occupies a late 16th-century building. Historic England lists it as a public house of late C16 date, much restored in the early 20th century, and records that the licence is only said to date from 1580. Large C16 beams survive upstairs; the showy half-timbering outside is Edwardian. So the claim sits half a century before the fabric, and even the 1580 licence is reported rather than cited. CAMRA rates the interior — bar, snug and glazed screen — as nationally important.", "sources": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1228932 | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-dolphin-inne-derby-143488 | https://www.visitderby.co.uk/listings/ye-olde-dolphin-inn | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1581794", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-dolphin-inne-derby/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-mitre-london", "name": "Ye Olde Mitre", "city": "London", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1546, "earliest_documented": 1791, "gap_years": 245, "building_year": 1772, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II listed (Historic England 1078281), designated 24 October 1951", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The claim is the pub's own: its about page says the Mitre was built in 1546 for the servants of the Bishops of Ely. Historic England shows the current building dates from the 1770s redevelopment, with licensees recorded from 1791.", "sources": "https://heritagecalling.com/2025/09/25/what-is-the-oldest-historic-pub-in-london/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-mitre-london-156323 | https://www.yeoldemitreholborn.co.uk/about | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1078281 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/423794 | https://www.yeoldemitreholborn.co.uk/whats-on", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-mitre-london/" }, { "slug": "ye-olde-white-harte-kingston-upon-hull", "name": "Ye Olde White Harte", "city": "Kingston upon Hull", "country": "United Kingdom", "nation": "England", "type": "pub", "claimed_founded": 1550, "earliest_documented": 1730, "gap_years": 180, "building_year": 1660, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Grade II* listed (Historic England 1197696), designated 13 October 1952", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "Wikipedia records the present house as about 1660 in Artisan Mannerist style, attributed to William Catlyn, with a house on the site in 1550 and pub use only from the 1730s; the 1730 is decade-level rather than a dated licence. CAMRA's Hull and East Yorkshire branch agrees — licensed premises since the eighteenth century, parts of the building from the seventeenth — and gives the interior three stars on the national inventory, outstanding national historic importance, for a remodelling of 1881 by the local architects Smith & Brodrick that turned a merchant's house into an idealised 'Olde Englishe' inn with hugely enlarged brick fireplaces. The branch is blunt about the upstairs Plotting Parlour: the Civil War story cannot be right, because the building post-dates the war, and the plot the room fits is the one of 1688 against the Catholic governor James II had appointed. The smoke room was refurbished in 2023 and its disused built-in telephone kiosk survives.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_White_Harte | https://www.yeoldewhiteharte.com/ | https://the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/ | https://camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-white-harte-hull-181226 | https://ratings.food.gov.uk/business/192658 | https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197696", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/ye-olde-white-harte-kingston-upon-hull/" }, { "slug": "young-and-jackson-hotel-melbourne", "name": "Young and Jackson Hotel", "city": "Melbourne", "country": "Australia", "nation": "", "type": "hotel-pub", "claimed_founded": 1861, "earliest_documented": 1861, "gap_years": 0, "building_year": 1853, "building_year_source": "Building fabric", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Victorian Heritage Register H0708", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The Victorian Heritage Register has the bluestone corner building of 1853 designed as a three-storey residence with a butcher's shop on the ground floor, and records that it opened as a hotel in July 1861 with John T Toohey as licensee. Henry Figsby Young and Thomas Jackson took over the licence in 1875, extended the house with the architect John Flannigan and the builder Henry Wright, and gave it the name it still carries. Young bought Jules Lefebvre's nude Chloe in 1908 and hung it in the saloon bar, a painting that had caused a public outcry when it came to Melbourne for the International Exhibition of 1880-81, and the publicity did him no harm. He sold his leasehold in 1914 to the brewer Stephen Morell. The five buildings were united behind one facade in 1921 by the hotel architect Richard B Whittaker, who added the red glazed tile dado to fight the grime at street level; the large signs on the outside have been a feature since the 1920s. eMelbourne, the University of Melbourne's encyclopaedia of the city, published in 2008 with an entry by Andrew May drawing on Leslie A Schumer's article in the Royal Historical Society of Victoria's journal of March 1983, gives the opening a day as well as a month: the Princes Bridge Hotel opened on 1 July 1861. It differs from the register on the licensee's middle initial, John P Toohey against John T Toohey, and then carries the licence on where the register jumps to 1875 — transferred to James Hogan in 1862 and to Joshua Roberts Mooney in 1866, so the house was licensed without a break through the 1860s. It names the butcher in the 1853 building, James Graham, puts the block in John Batman's purchase of 1837 for a hundred pounds with part of the allotment bought by Henry Jennings in 1852, gives Young's and Jackson's dates as 1845-1925 and 1834-1901 and has the pair, both born in Dublin, holding the licence of Sparrow's Hotel in St Kilda before this one. It agrees on Chloe in the saloon bar in 1908 and on the sale to Morell in 1914, and takes the ownership on: Marcel Gilbert in 1979, the Bond Corporation's brewing arm in 1986, Australian Leisure and Hospitality in 1998.", "sources": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_and_Jackson_Hotel | https://www.youngandjacksons.com.au/ | https://drinkinghistorytours.com/melbournes-best-bars/melbourne-best-old-pubs/ | https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/810/download-report | https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01672b.htm", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/young-and-jackson-hotel-melbourne/" }, { "slug": "zum-schwarzen-kameel-vienna", "name": "Zum Schwarzen Kameel", "city": "Vienna", "country": "Austria", "nation": "", "type": "tavern", "claimed_founded": 1618, "earliest_documented": "", "gap_years": "", "building_year": 1901, "building_year_source": "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_Schwarzen_Kameel", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "The 1618 dates a spice merchant's shop. A wine room was fitted up only after Joseph Stiebitz took the business over in 1818, so drink sold to be drunk here is a nineteenth-century trade.", "trade_today": "A delicatessen with a bar and a brasserie; the bar serves wine, cocktails and coffee all day without a booking.", "evidence_notes": "The house dates itself to 1618 on its own pages, and what 1618 dates is a shop: Johann Baptist Cameel, a merchant who had come to Vienna from Brno, bought a house already standing in the Bognergasse and set up a spice and grocery business, which he named after himself. The City of Vienna's historical encyclopedia puts that a year later, in 1619, and it is worth knowing that the round anniversary the firm kept in 2018 rests on the earlier of the two. Both accounts agree about what came next, which is the part that matters here: the shop was extended into a wine room in the nineteenth century, after the former bookkeeper Joseph Stiebitz took the business over from Jacob Partel in 1818, and it became known to Viennese society as a place to breakfast. The Viennese press bears that out and puts a date on it. The Fremden-Blatt of 19 December 1852 and of 2 January 1853, in the Austrian National Library's newspaper archive, carries the firm's own advertisement under the heading Spezerei- und Wein-Handlung, Stadt, Bognergasse, zum schwarzen Kameel — a spice and wine business, that is, and a business selling wine over a counter rather than a room to drink it in. Nothing in the archive shows a public drinking room at the sign, which is consistent with what both histories say and is why no year is entered here as the start of drink-led trade. Beethoven and the painter Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller were customers; Waldmüller drew the camel the firm still uses, and the house was appointed a purveyor to the imperial court in 1825. So the counter you can drink at is two centuries younger than the year over the door, which is why the house keeps its page and its pin and stays out of the ranking. The rooms themselves are younger still: the building was put up new in 1901 and fitted out in the Viennese Jugendstil by Portois & Fix. That you can drink here without eating is settled by the house itself, which says the ground-floor bar pours wine, cocktails and coffee from eight in the morning until midnight and takes no reservations.", "sources": "https://schwarzeskameel.at/ | https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Zum_schwarzen_Kameel | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zum_Schwarzen_Kameel | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/549357085 | https://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=fdb&datum=18521219&seite=14", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/zum-schwarzen-kameel-vienna/" }, { "slug": "zum-uerige-dusseldorf", "name": "Zum Uerige", "city": "Düsseldorf", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1862, "earliest_documented": 1783, "gap_years": -79, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "A", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "", "evidence_notes": "The house dates itself from the brewery and not from the inn, which is why the record here is older than the claim. Its own chronicle sets out that on 4 January 1862 the widow Bender sold the Bergischer Hof to the innkeeper and brewer Wilhelm Cürten, who put a brewery in the cellar and the back buildings and was soon serving his own top-fermented beer in the ground-floor rooms; the regulars' word for his temper, uerig in the Düsseldorf dialect, became the name of the house and of the beer. The German Wikipedia article and the city magazine Duesseldorf-Magazin give the same day and the same names, and agree about what came before: owners are named from 1632, and by 1755, when Bertram Kesseler held the house, there was already a guest house called the Heidelberger Fass, a name still lettered over the door. A postmaster kept the imperial post here about the same time, with board and lodging for travellers, and the Juppens, the wine merchants who followed in 1783, sold wine on the premises. No archive document has been read for any of this; three accounts name the same people in the same years, and the Düsseldorf chronicler Heinrich Ferber, writing in 1890, is quoted on the yard as he remembered it. Nothing about the drinking is in doubt today: the beer is brewed on the premises and carried round by waiters called Köbesse, and in fine weather the drinkers stand out across the Rheinstraße. Heinrich Ferber's own book was read on 18 September 2026, in the Bavarian State Library's digitisation, and it changes what can be said about the years before 1862. On page 62 of the second volume of his walk through the old town of Düsseldorf, published there in 1890, he takes the Bergerstrasse house by house and begins at the corner of the Berger- and Rheinstrasse: number 1, the house called the Heidelberger Fass, was already the Pfeilstickers' in 1632, with one Martin Pütz living in it, and the widow Pfeilsticker was there with two daughters in 1663. In 1720 Johann Bernard Pfeilsticker pledged his share of the family house for a hundred Reichsthaler borrowed from his brother, and the reason he gave for wanting it was his cooper's trade — the family that held the house made barrels, which is worth knowing beside a sign naming the great vat of Heidelberg. The 1755 that three modern accounts print as a guest house is, in Ferber, a wedding: Wendelina Elisabeth Pfeilsticker married the Palatine councillor Bertram Goswin Joseph Kesseler that year and brought him the house, and Ferber says nothing about anybody being served in it. What he does record is 1783, when the wine merchant Leonhard Juppen gave notice that he had left his quarters on the Neubrück for his mother's house, the Heidelberger Fass on the Bergerstrasse, and that travellers on horseback or with a carriage would find lodging, stabling, good wine and food there at the cheapest price; and 1790, when the Grubens bought the house and kept a guest house in it. The host Lambert Gruben sold it in 1800 to Lambert Mertens; Johann Bender had it afterwards and ran a fruit trade beside his guest house from 1802; his widow still owned it in 1858; and Ferber, writing in 1890, says it then belonged to the widow of Wilhelm Cürten. That last line is an independent sighting of the Cürtens at this address twenty-eight years after the year the house gives, from a publisher that is neither the brewery nor an encyclopaedia. Two things Ferber has not got. There is no postmaster and no imperial post at number 1 in his account, though the modern ones put both here; and there is no brewery, no Wilhelm Cürten's cellar and no Uerige, because he is writing a history of title and not of trade. His silence about the brewhouse is therefore not evidence against it. What his pages do argue is that the earliest advertised drinking at this address is 1783 and not 1755, and that the 1755 in circulation is a marriage read as a licence.", "sources": "https://uerige.de/historie | https://uerige.de/termine | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uerige | https://duesseldorf-magazin.de/essen-und-trinken/hausbrauereien-mit-ausschank/hausbrauerei-uerige | https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11836124?page=70", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/zum-uerige-dusseldorf/" }, { "slug": "zur-letzten-instanz-berlin", "name": "Zur letzten Instanz", "city": "Berlin", "country": "Germany", "nation": "", "type": "gasthaus", "claimed_founded": 1621, "earliest_documented": 1715, "gap_years": 94, "building_year": "", "building_year_source": "", "evidence_grade": "C", "trading_status": "trading", "status_confidence": "checked", "status_checked": "2026-09", "listed_status": "Baudenkmal in Berlin's monument list, object document number 09011253, entered by the Landesdenkmalamt as a dwelling house and inn at Waisenstraße 14 in Mitte, dated before 1700 with rebuildings before 1750 and in 1961-63", "top100_rank": "", "not_in_top100_because": "", "trade_today": "A restaurant of Berlin cooking, with a beer garden and a wine list of a dozen wines by the glass.", "evidence_notes": "The house was first recorded in 1561, when it was a Wiekhaus — a small dwelling built against the town wall, and the last of them in old Berlin — and the date it prints is 1621, the year a riding groom of the Elector of Brandenburg opened a spirits room on the ground floor. Neither German Wikipedia nor the Berlin readers' site that retells the story names a document behind it, and the second attributes the account to the house's own menu card, so the grade is C. What is dated is the trade afterwards. About 1715 the owners called the tap house Zum Bierstübchen am Glockenspiel, after the carillon installed that year in the Parochialkirche next door; a Berlin address book of 1822 records the premises in use as a licensed yard; a landlord named Runge kept the bar when the street was renamed in 1861; and the present name was settled in 1924 by an owner called G. Hoffmann, out of the tale of two farmers who ended a long lawsuit by drinking together in the last instance. Berlin's Landesdenkmalamt holds the house as a Baudenkmal under object document number 09011253, and its entry, read on 17 September 2026, is the first account of this building from a public authority rather than from the house or an encyclopaedia. It classes the property as a dwelling house and inn, dates it before 1700 with a rebuilding before 1750 and another in 1961-63, and is candid about what survives: the fabric was almost entirely replaced in the rebuilding, and the house matters for where it stands — against the inner face of the medieval city wall — and for how it looks rather than for what it is made of. It dates the predecessors mostly to the end of the seventeenth century, with late medieval cores and fronts renewed in the first half of the eighteenth, which is later than the 1561 and later than the 1621 the house prints. And it corrects the address: the inn was originally in the house next door, number 15, and was only fitted through all three houses after they were joined in the rebuilding, so the door a drinker now uses is not the door the spirits room had. The register dates the majolica stove to the eighteenth century and records that the spiral staircase and its wrought-iron rococo balustrade were brought here from a house in the Fischerstraße. The building is not the one that stood through all that. Bombing left Waisenstraße 15 repairable in the magistrate's view, but in November 1961 East Berlin decided to reopen the house as a state-run restaurant and a draw for visitors, and numbers 14, 15 and 16 were taken down to their foundations and rebuilt as a single ensemble, opened in January 1963 with three rooms for 120 guests and eight bedrooms above; the medieval fabric and the old room plan went with them, and the majolica tiled stove that Napoleon is said to have sat beside was put back. Berlin's official tourist board calls it without doubt the oldest restaurant in the city. Drink without a meal is answered by the house's own pages: a beer garden, and a wine list published on its own for spring 2026 with a dozen wines by the glass. The register's reading list is where a further pass should start, and two of its entries are dated pictures of the house in trade: a photograph of 1904 printed in Max Missmann's Das große Berlin, and Täubrich's Zu Gast im alten Berlin for 1901.", "sources": "https://zurletzteninstanz.com/ | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zur_letzten_Instanz | https://www.berlin-lese.de/gastliches/restaurants-hotels/zur-letzten-instanz/ | https://www.visitberlin.de/en/zur-letzten-instanz | https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/411728139 | https://denkmaldatenbank.berlin.de/daobj.php?obj_dok_nr=09011253", "page": "https://oldpubs.com/pubs/zur-letzten-instanz-berlin/" } ] }