3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
The City of Melbourne recognises the Duke of Wellington, on the corner of Flinders and Russell streets, as the city's oldest pub still trading: licensed to Richard Dalton, as announced in The Argus on 30 June 1853 after failed applications in 1851–52. Young and Jackson opposite Flinders Street Station opened as the Princes Bridge Hotel on 1 July 1861 in a bluestone building of 1853, and the Mitre Tavern in Bank Place was licensed on 3 April 1868 in a colonial house that the city counts among its oldest.
Melbourne's pub history is short, sharply dated and very well recorded, because the city and the gold rush arrived almost together. Melbourne was founded in the 1830s; the licences that matter here were granted in the 1850s and 1860s, when the goldfields filled the town with money and people; and every one of them was announced in a newspaper that has since been digitised, which is why the three contenders can be dated to the day rather than the decade. The buildings are bluestone and brick, and the best of the old rooms are down the laneways rather than on the main streets. What Melbourne shares with Sydney is the gap between licence and fabric: a public note on the Victorian Heritage Database records that the Duke of Wellington's 1857 and 1904 sections were demolished around 2004, and the pub itself was closed for redevelopment from 2006 until 2013. The licence is the continuity; the walls are mostly not.
The Duke of Wellington now spreads over three levels — a traditional public bar, a dining room, a cocktail bar and a rooftop looking towards Federation Square — which is a long way from the 1850 boarding house that Richard Dalton was licensed to run. The Mitre Tavern is the one to seek out for atmosphere: low doorways, a Queen Anne remodelling, a leafy beer garden it claims is the largest in the central city, and a history as a bohemian haunt of early twentieth-century artists next door to the Savage Club. It was saved from demolition in 1937. Young and Jackson is the most famous corner in Melbourne drinking, named after the licensees Henry Young and Thomas Jackson in 1875.
Victoria’s oldest licence claims are not in Melbourne at all but in the western ports: Portland’s Gordon Hotel traces itself to 1842 and Port Fairy’s Caledonian Inn to 1844. Both are on the state list at the oldest pubs in Victoria. There is a walking route through the city’s old pubs at Melbourne’s oldest pubs, and the national picture is at the oldest pubs in Australia.
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Melbourne, Victoria
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 —
Melbourne, Victoria
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
Melbourne, Victoria
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
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