21 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
Oldest claim
Says 1360. No document from that date has been found.
Grade C · TraditionBy claim, the oldest pub in Scotland is the Sheep Heid Inn at Duddingston in Edinburgh, which dates itself to about 1360; Historic Environment Scotland's listing describes an essentially eighteenth-century building. No pub on this page can yet produce a document from at or near the date it claims, so the honest answer is that Scotland has no proven oldest pub. The nearest things to evidence here are a map and a listing: the Drovers Inn at Inverarnan is marked as an inn on a map of 1776, and the Cramond Inn's north block is dated to about 1670 by Historic Environment Scotland, which is the date attached to that pub.
Scotland's oldest-pub question has a published answer, and it is a negative one. In his history of Scottish drinking, Anthony Cooke concludes that no surviving building in Scotland proven to have been built as an inn is older than the seventeenth century, and that the houses claiming earlier origins have usually been rebuilt on the site of something older, or are older buildings that were never inns to begin with. Falkland, Linlithgow and Haddington all supply candidates of that second kind: handsome sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses that took in travellers only later in their lives. Two other things shape the Scottish list. The surviving interiors are strikingly Victorian, built around the island counter and the tall gantry of spirit casks rather than the snug and the settle. And outside the towns the characteristic old drinking house is the change-house or drovers' stop — an inn set alone on a military road or a cattle route, where the trade is genuinely ancient even where the paperwork is thin. Twenty-one Scottish houses are gathered here, town bars and drove-road inns together.
Read the Historic Environment Scotland entries alongside the pubs’ own histories and the same gap opens every time. The Sheep Heid claims 1360 against an eighteenth-century core. The White Hart claims 1516 against a building of about 1740. The Drovers Inn claims 1705, while the listing suggests the building may have begun as barracks for the military road driven north past Loch Lomond in 1748–53 and records it on a map of 1776. The Black Bull in Moffat dates itself to 1568, and the listing for it writes that down as a claim while dating the building to probably the eighteenth century, on the site of an earlier inn. The Drovers is the useful case: the claim is wrong and the building is still genuinely old, which is why it grades better than pubs with earlier dates and no evidence at all.
Scotland’s most convincing old drinking houses are the ones whose function you can see from the road. Clachaig Inn sits where anyone crossing Glen Coe would have had to stop. The Clachan at Drymen stands on the square where the Rob Roy Way begins, and keeps a salt box hidden in its old fireplace from the years of the salt tax. The Globe Inn in Dumfries admits that little is documented about its early proprietors, but its role as Robert Burns’s howff in the 1790s is beyond doubt — his verses are still scratched into the window panes upstairs. For the wider comparison see the oldest pubs in the UK, and for how we grade a claim against a listing entry, the methodology.
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Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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.
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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
Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway
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
Irvine, North Ayrshire
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
South Queensferry, City of Edinburgh
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
Dumfries, Dumfries and Galloway
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
Dumfries, Dumfries and Galloway
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
Thornhill, Stirling
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
Loch Eck, Argyll and Bute
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
Perth, Perth and Kinross
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
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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
Moulin, Perth and Kinross
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
Inverarnan, Stirling
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
Glencoe, Highland
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
Stirling, Scotland
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
Drymen, Stirling
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
Findhorn, Moray
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
Aberdeen, Aberdeen City
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
Roslin, Midlothian
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
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.
