19 dated days · 19 dates in the month
February in pub history
19 days in February that somebody wrote down, spread across 19 dates of the month and 237 years — the earliest 26 February 1776, when that noted house at Tappantown, and the most recent 1 February 2013. 16 of them name a house with a page on this site.
1 February
2013
The Crook Inn is written down as closed long term
The Crook Inn at Tweedsmuir had been shut since 2006 when CAMRA moved its record to closed long term on 1 February 2013, future uncertain. The freehold has since passed to a community company, which plans to open the hotel again in phases.
2 February
1981
Cadw reads the Llindir
Cadw listed the thatched Llindir Inn at Henllan on 2 February 1981, for its interest as an inn with sub-medieval origins at the western approach to the village. The inn claims 1229; the register's earliest phase is probably late in the sixteenth century.
3 February
1984
Two Castletown houses registered
The Isle of Man's register of buildings entered two of Castletown's public houses on the same day, 3 February 1984 — the George as number 38, and the Castle Arms. A register entry describes a building and dates no drinking in it.
4 February
1944
The Table Ronde is closed down
The German authorities shut the Café de la Table Ronde in Grenoble on 4 February 1944 and arrested its owner, Marie Pollini, with a number of the regulars; the back room had served the resistance. The café had opened on the place Saint-André in 1739, in a clockmaker's shop.
7 February
1974
The Turk's Head is listed
The Turk's Head on Chapel Street in Penzance was listed at Grade II on 7 February 1974, the same day as the town's custom house and the Trinity House depot. The pub dates itself to 1233, and no record of drinking that old has been traced here.
9 February
1961
The Church House Inn is listed
The Church House Inn at Rattery went on Historic England's list at Grade II* on 9 February 1961. The tradition of 1028 belongs to the men said to have built the parish church beside it, and the pub's own website does not repeat the year.
12 February
1976
Ye Olde George Inn is listed
Ye Olde George Inn on Castle Street in Christchurch was first listed at Grade II on 12 February 1976, under the spelling Ye Old George Inne. The register reads a timber frame refaced in the eighteenth century behind painted brick, where the pub says fifteenth century.
14 February
2008
The Merrijig Inn joins the Victorian register
The notice adding the Merrijig Inn at Port Fairy to the Victorian Heritage Register was signed on 7 February 2008 and published in the government gazette a week later, on the 14th. The whitewashed house of 1845 was trading as the Royal Merrijig by 1847.
15 February
1993
The Harp at Old Radnor
Cadw listed the Harp at Old Radnor on 15 February 1993, reading a former cross-passage timber-framed house of the sixteenth or seventeenth century whose walls were later rebuilt in rubble stone. The flagged floors and the brick bread oven beside the fireplace are in the entry.
17 February
1864
A birth at Clachaig
The register of births for the district of Glencoe and Appin has Janet Maclennan's daughter born at Clachaig on 17 February 1864. The inn transcribes it on its own history page, and with the marriage entry of 1866 it is the earliest record of the house this site holds.
18 February
1860
An inquest at the Hand & Shears
The London City Press of 18 February 1860 reported an inquest held on the premises of the Hand & Shears at Smithfield. The pub letters 1532 across its website and a sign on the corner records a justices' licence of 1552; neither year has a published record behind it.
20 February
1952
The Oxenham Arms is listed
Historic England listed the Oxenham Arms at South Zeal at Grade II* on 20 February 1952, as an inn and former manor house of the Burgoyne family, late sixteenth to early seventeenth century and maybe earlier in parts. The inn claims the twelfth.
22 February
2011
The Carlton loses its front
Part of the Carlton Hotel's Papanui Road façade came down in the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011. Engineers judged the rest likely to follow in an aftershock, the hotel was demolished on 9 April, and its heritage registration was cancelled the same year.
23 February
1972
The White Horse Tavern is listed
Newport's White Horse Tavern, a house of 1652 turned into a tavern in 1673, went on the National Register of Historic Places in February 1972. Its nomination papers carry two stamps: the entry date at the head of the form reads the 3rd and the certification at the foot the 23rd, and the register's own service gives only the month.
24 February
1977
Ye Olde Dolphin is listed
Derby's Ye Olde Dolphin Inne was listed at Grade II on 24 February 1977, under the name the Old Dolphin Public House. Its sign says 1530; the register reads the frame as late sixteenth-century, much restored early in the twentieth.
25 February
1952
The Old Wellington is listed
The Old Wellington in Manchester was listed at Grade II on 25 February 1952, and its entry amended in June 1994. The timber frame is dated 1552, and the whole house was taken apart and rebuilt about a hundred metres away in the redevelopment of the late 1990s.
26 February
1776
That noted house at Tappantown
The New York Gazette of 26 February 1776 advertised the noted house and lot where Casparus Mabie had lived, a stone building of four rooms to a floor. Frank B. Green's county history of 1886 prints the notice; nothing in it supports the 1668 the '76 House is given in lists of oldest bars.
28 February
1953
An announcement at lunchtime in Cambridge
Francis Crick interrupted lunch at the Eagle in Cambridge on 28 February 1953 to tell the room that he and James Watson had found the secret of life. The pub had opened as a coaching inn in 1667.
29 February
1928
Ølhallen opens on a leap day
Ølhallen opened in the cellar beneath Macks Ølbryggeri at Tromsø on 29 February 1928, so its opening day comes round once in four years. It kept hours of ten in the morning until six at night, was for decades a room for fishermen and trappers, and admitted no women until late in the 1960s.
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.