18 dated days · 18 dates in the month
December in pub history
18 days in December that somebody wrote down, spread across 18 dates of the month and 556 years — the earliest 18 December 1455, when the newly built Kyngeshede, and the most recent 15 December 2011. 15 of them name a house with a page on this site.
2 December
1946
Belgrade protects the question mark
A decision of the Art Museum in Belgrade, number 1108 of 2 December 1946, declared the house opposite the cathedral on Kralja Petra a cultural monument; the central register entered it in 1981. It was built in 1823 and became a kafana three years later, and the question mark over the door stands in place of a name the church objected to.
3 December
1949
Ye Olde Beverlie is listed
Ye Olde Beverlie on St Stephen's Green in Canterbury was first listed at Grade II on 3 December 1949. Its garden is said to be where the Kentish game of bat and trap began.
4 December
1783
Washington's farewell
George Washington took leave of his officers in the Long Room at Fraunces Tavern on 4 December 1783. The building was heavily reconstructed between 1904 and 1907, so the room they stood in is an interpretation.
5 December
1933
Prohibition ends
Utah ratified the Twenty-first Amendment on 5 December 1933, the thirty-sixth state to do so, and national prohibition was over. American bars claiming unbroken trade since the colonies have thirteen dry years to account for.
6 December
1983
The second Salutation closes
The Salutation rebuilt further down the street in Dover closed for good on 6 December 1983, nineteen years after the original came down for a wider pavement. The name never took in the new building.
8 December
1796
A linen merchant's licence at Ribe
Søren Andersen Weis took a burgess's licence at Ribe as a linen merchant on 8 December 1796. The drink came later and by habit: farmers who came in to borrow his corn measure took to buying something to go with their food, and in 1830 he took a further licence as a distiller and publican.
12 December
1974
The Sheep Heid is listed
The Sheep Heid Inn at Duddingston, under Arthur's Seat, was added to the list at category B on 12 December 1974. The house dates itself to about 1360; the listed building is largely eighteenth-century with later alterations.
14 December
1970
The King's Wark is listed
The King's Wark on Leith's Shore was added to the Scottish list at Category A on 14 December 1970. Historic Environment Scotland reads an early eighteenth-century gabled corner tenement, possibly taking in earlier remains, standing on the site of the royal warehouse the pub is named for.
15 December
2011
Cardrona's false front is listed
Heritage New Zealand entered the false front of the Cardrona Hotel, and only the false front, as a category 2 historic place on 15 December 2011. The building dates from the 1860s, when it was the Empire Hotel; the Cardrona name came in 1926.
16 December
1952
The Old Swan is listed
Cadw listed the Old Swan at Llantwit Major at Grade II* on 16 December 1952, and dates the building to the sixteenth century or the early seventeenth. The pub claims the twelfth.
18 December
1455
The newly built Kyngeshede
A conveyance of 18 December 1455, between the London wool merchant William Wandeford and Ralph Verney, names the newly built Kyngeshede at Aylesbury along with a cellar, a shop and cottages. The National Trust has held the inn since 1925.
19 December
1852
A spice and wine business
The Fremden-Blatt of 19 December 1852 carried the firm's own advertisement in Vienna, headed as a spice and wine business at the sign of the black camel in the Bognergasse. That is wine sold over a counter rather than a room to drink it in, which is why the house's 1618 dates a shop.
20 December
1960
The George at Lacock is listed
The George in Lacock was listed at Grade II on 20 December 1960. Historic England reads an inn of the sixteenth century or earlier, timber-framed and rubble stone, extended in an ashlar range early in the nineteenth; a dog wheel by the hearth once turned the spit.
22 December
1955
Fire at the Wayside Inn
Fire gutted Longfellow's Wayside Inn on the night of 22 and 23 December 1955. Much of the fabric a visitor sees is younger than the 1716 licence the inn is famous for.
23 December
1803
Four dollars at Lebanon
Jonas Seaman paid four dollars on 23 December 1803 for a licence to keep a house of public entertainment at Lebanon, Ohio. The log tavern was replaced by the brick Golden Lamb in 1815.
27 December
1749
Eighty freemasons at Annapolis
The Maryland Gazette reported that on St John's day, 27 December 1749, eighty freemasons walked in procession in white gloves and aprons from the house of their brother Middleton to the church at Annapolis, and dined afterwards at the Indian King.
29 December
1950
The Prospect of Whitby is listed
The Prospect of Whitby at Wapping was first listed at Grade II on 29 December 1950. The register dates the building to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the old flagstone floor retained; the c. 1520 the pub gives is tradition.
31 December
1759
Nine thousand years at St James's Gate
Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a disused brewery at St James's Gate in Dublin on 31 December 1759, at £45 a year.
Every entry above cites the record that carries the day and the month, because a founding year is not an anniversary: a house may have been pouring since 1189 and still appear here only on the day a clerk wrote something down. The whole archive holds 204 such days across 12 months — on this day in pub history opens on whichever date the site was last built for. How a date is weighed is on how we date a pub; the ones that do not survive checking are in myths, checked.
Updated 11 October 2026.