340 pubs checked in 31 countries
The short answer
There are two, and they are not the same pub.
Oldest claim
Holywell. Says AD 560, on tradition alone. The earliest document is 1841.
Grade C · TraditionOldest proof
Dietikon. A drinking house here is on record from 1259; the building is dated to about 1703.
Grade A · DocumentedEvery country has a pub that says it is the oldest, and almost none can show a document from the year on the sign. Of the 100 oldest claims we have checked, 8 have a record from at or near the date claimed. The rest rest on a building of the right age, or on a story.
That is not a scandal. Nobody kept a register of when ale started being sold in a house, and the documents that survive were written for tax and tenancy, not history. What we can do is show both dates for every pub, side by side, and say which is which. How we date a pub sets out the rules.
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Ranked by the earliest year a document puts a drinking house on the site. This is the list almost nobody publishes, because the famous names are not on it.
The top twelve of the Top 100, ordered by the date each one puts on its sign.
Holywell, England
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, England
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.
Llanelian-yn-Rhos, Wales
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
Athlone, Ireland
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
Stow-on-the-Wold, England
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, England
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, England
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, England
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, England
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, England
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.
Kelheim-Weltenburg, Germany
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.
Lanlivery, England
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
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