107 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
Oldest proof
On record from 1432; the building is dated to about 1430.
Grade A · DocumentedBy claim, the oldest pub in England is the Old Ferry Boat Inn at Holywell in Cambridgeshire, which dates itself to AD 560; its earliest continuous run of named innkeepers begins in 1841. By evidence the answer is a different building in a different county: the George Inn at Norton St Philip in Somerset, whose timber upper floors were tree-ring dated to 1430–32 and which Historic England considers the strongest candidate for England's earliest surviving purpose-built inn.
England has more ancient-pub claims than any other country, and part of the reason is bureaucratic. Domesday Book counts mills, ploughs and churches but no pubs, and the licensing system that produces most usable pub records begins only with the Ale Houses Act of 1551–52, which put alehouse keepers in front of justices of the peace at quarter sessions. Anything earlier survives by accident: a manor court roll, a monastic account, a will, a bequest of a tenement. So the pubs with Saxon and Norman dates painted on their signs are almost never quoting a document. They are quoting a tradition, and often one written down for the first time by a Victorian or Edwardian landlord who understood that age sells beer. What England does have, in unusual numbers, is medieval fabric: purpose-built pilgrim inns raised by monasteries, church houses where the parish brewed its ales, and timber-framed merchants' houses that became taverns centuries after they were built. That is where the defensible dates live, and it is what every pub on this page is measured against.
Three patterns account for most of England’s very early dates. The first is the church-builders’ story: an inn is said to have been raised to house the masons working on the parish church next door, as at the Red Lion in Chalton, the Crown at Lanlivery and the Tinners Arms in Zennor. It is plausible in outline and almost never documented in detail. The second is the monastic guest house, which is often true of the building and rarely provable of the drinking: the Olde Bell at Hurley and the Lord Crewe Arms at Blanchland both stand on genuinely monastic ground. The third is the round number attached to a famous event — crusaders in 1189, a market charter in 1251 — which tends to appear in print centuries after the event itself.
We grade on three things: a document naming the house as a drinking house, physical dating of the fabric, and continuity of trade. Tree-ring dating has been decisive in a handful of cases, including the Bell Inn in Nottingham, whose timbers are mid-fifteenth century even though its paperwork begins in the 1630s. Where a claim rests on a test nobody can produce, we say so — the radiocarbon date usually quoted for the Porch House in Stow-on-the-Wold cannot be traced to a published report. The full grading rules are on our methodology page, and the county lists for Cornwall, Devon and Kent show how differently the evidence falls from one part of the country to another.
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Holywell, Cambridgeshire
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.
St Albans, Hertfordshire
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.
Trusham, Devon
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
Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire
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
Morwenstow, Cornwall
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
Bardsey, West Yorkshire
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.
St Breward, Cornwall
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
Winchester, Hampshire
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.
Rattery, Devon
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.
Lanlivery, Cornwall
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
South Zeal, Devon
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
Hurley, Berkshire
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.
Chalton, Hampshire
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
Southampton, Hampshire
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
Chester, Cheshire
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
Rye, East Sussex
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
Blanchland, Northumberland
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
Eastbourne, East Sussex
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.
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
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.
Rochester, Kent
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
Houghton, West Sussex
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
Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire
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
Mylor Bridge, Cornwall
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.
Porlock, Somerset
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
Thames Ditton, Surrey
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.
Grantham, Lincolnshire
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
Chester, Cheshire
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
Speldhurst, Kent
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*
Forty Green, Buckinghamshire
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.
Penzance, Cornwall
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
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
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
Oxford, Oxfordshire
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.
Norwich, Norfolk
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.
Bolton, Greater Manchester
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
Zennor, Cornwall
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
Stamford, Lincolnshire
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
Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire
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
Cranbrook, Kent
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.
Lacock, Wiltshire
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
Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon
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
Witley, Surrey
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
Ripponden, West Yorkshire
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
Wymondham, Norfolk
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
Pembridge, Herefordshire
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
St Ives, Cornwall
'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
Lydiate, Merseyside
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.
Dartington, Devon
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
Salisbury, Wiltshire
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
Aldworth, Berkshire
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.
Slapton, Devon
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.
Westbere, Kent
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
Addington, Kent
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.
Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire
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
Birmingham, West Midlands
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.
Canterbury, Kent
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
Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire
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
Dartmouth, Devon
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
Oxford, Oxfordshire
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.
Chiddingfold, Surrey
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.
Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
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
Norton St Philip, Somerset
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
Cardington, Shropshire
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
Bretforton, Worcestershire
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.
Lamberhurst, Kent
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
Rye, East Sussex
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
Christchurch, Dorset
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
York, North Yorkshire
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
Biddenden, Kent
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
London, England
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.
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
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
Dunster, Somerset
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
Gloucester, Gloucestershire
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
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
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
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
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
Tutbury, Staffordshire
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.
Oxford, Oxfordshire
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
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
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
Stoke Gabriel, Devon
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
Harberton, Devon
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
Coventry, West Midlands
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
Mullion, Cornwall
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
York, North Yorkshire
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
London, England
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
Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire
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
Derby, Derbyshire
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
London, England
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.
London, England
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
Woodbridge, Suffolk
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
Ledsham, West Yorkshire
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
London, England
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
London, England
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.
London, England
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
Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire
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
London, England
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 —
Newport, Isle of Wight
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
Manchester, Greater Manchester
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.
Blakey Ridge, North Yorkshire
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
Coggeshall, Essex
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
Corfe Castle, Dorset
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
Canterbury, Kent
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
Edale, Derbyshire
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
Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear
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
London, England
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.
London, England
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.
Penzance, Cornwall
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
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
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.
London, England
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
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences, or in the public domain. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.
London
Historic England's 2025 review of London's oldest-pub claims gives the strongest one to the George Inn in Southwark, recorded as an inn on a map of about 1542 and rebuilt in 1677 after the Southwark fire. Almost every other famous London date turns out to be later than advertised, and several of the buildings were not pubs at all when their sign says they were.
Photo: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK · licence
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