16 dated days · 16 dates in the month
January in pub history
16 days in January that somebody wrote down, spread across 16 dates of the month and 224 years — the earliest 31 January 1794, when the landlord who would not take paper, and the most recent 7 January 2018. 10 of them name a house with a page on this site.
1 January
1876
The first registered trade mark
The Trade Marks Registration Act took effect on 1 January 1876, and Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton took the first six registrations, the red triangle on its pale ale among them. That a Bass man queued overnight at the registry is told as legend.
2 January
1945
Bombing takes the Röslein's old house
The timber-framed house that Bratwurst Röslein had grown out of was destroyed in the bombing of Nuremberg on 2 January 1945. The trade carried on in a temporary place after the war, and the building on the Rathausplatz now went up between 1965 and 1967.
3 January
1887
Bar Luiz opens in Rio
Bar Luiz opened in central Rio de Janeiro on 3 January 1887 as Zum Schlauch, at the hose, named for the coiled pipe packed in ice that chilled its draught beer. Bankruptcy was declared against it in 2022.
4 January
1862
Wilhelm Cürten buys the Bergischer Hof
The widow Bender sold the Bergischer Hof in Düsseldorf to the innkeeper and brewer Wilhelm Cürten on 4 January 1862. He put a brewery in the cellar and the back buildings and served his own top-fermented beer in the front rooms; the dialect word for his temper, uerig, ended up over the door.
7 January
2018
The White Swan closes at Harringworth
The White Swan under the Welland viaduct stopped trading on 7 January 2018, and CAMRA recorded it closed long term the same day. Its sign says 1550; the listing describes a public house of seventeenth-century origins.
9 January
1915
The Bell in Hand shuts for a building that never came
The Bell in Hand closed on 9 January 1915 so that the Niles Block in Boston could be turned into offices, and drinkers came from across the city for the last call. The scheme never happened, and the tavern opened again on Devonshire Street in 1934.
10 January
1853
Licence number 47 at Waiuku
The Kentish Hotel's own history gives licence number 47, granted to Edward Constable on 10 January 1853 for the inn he had put up at Waiuku by early 1852. Heritage New Zealand's entry has him applying that January and dates the building to the year before.
12 January
1954
Three Oxford pubs listed in a day
The Bear, the Turf Tavern and the Chequers, each down a lane of its own in the middle of Oxford, were all listed at Grade II on 12 January 1954. The three date their own beginnings to 1242, 1381 and the 1500s; the register was reading their buildings.
13 January
1905
Bar Cordano, Lima
Spanish Wikipedia dates Bar Cordano, opposite the presidential palace in Lima, to 13 January 1905, when the Genoese Vigilio Botano opened it with the brothers Luis and Antonio Cordano. It was a bazaar first and a bar later.
14 January
1971
The Sławków inn joins the register
Poland's register of monuments entered the old town inn at Sławków on 14 January 1971 and dates it 1771. The town's own account says 1781, and the building has stood empty since the lease ended.
20 January
1962
Le Procope is inscribed
The French register of historic monuments inscribed part of Le Procope on 20 January 1962. The register reads the house as eighteenth-century; the café of 1686 was fitted up inside an older bath house.
23 January
1803
Arthur Guinness dies
Arthur Guinness died on 23 January 1803 at Beaumont, forty-three years after taking the lease on a disused brewery at St James's Gate. His sons kept the brewery and the lease.
24 January
1967
The Brocket Arms is listed
The Brocket Arms at Ayot St Lawrence was listed at Grade II on 24 January 1967, and the cottage immediately west of it the same day. The inn's tradition of 1378 has it built as quarters for monks; the register reads the frame as probably early sixteenth-century.
25 January
1904
Politika's first issue
The Belgrade daily Politika celebrated its own first issue at Tri Šešira in Skadarlija on 25 January 1904. It is the earliest dated occasion anybody places in these rooms, and it is sixty years later than the kafana's own date.
26 January
1865
Ben Hall's gang at Collector
Ben Hall's gang held up the hotel at Collector in New South Wales on 26 January 1865, and John Dunn shot the town's only constable, Samuel Nelson, outside it. The raid is what firmly dates the building's use as a hotel.
31 January
1794
The landlord who would not take paper
The Kentish Chronicle of 31 January 1794 reported the death of Mr Bowles, landlord of the Salutation at Dover, who left £340 in good halfpence and two half-ankers of bad ones rather than let his copper go for paper money.
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.