14 dated days · 14 dates in the month
May in pub history
14 days in May that somebody wrote down, spread across 14 dates of the month and 753 years — the earliest 12 May 1268, when a tavern in a Silesian charter, and the most recent 4 May 2021. 11 of them name a house with a page on this site.
1 May
1841
The Lord Nelson's licence
The Lord Nelson in Sydney dates its licence to 1 May 1841, in a sandstone house built about 1836. The state heritage record puts the licence a year later, and the pub page sets the two side by side.
3 May
2021
Fire closes the Old College Bar
The Old College Bar on Glasgow's High Street closed on 3 May 2021 after a fire, and CAMRA marked it permanently closed that October, condition demolished and site vacant. Nothing of it survives above the pavement.
4 May
2021
Fire in Glasgow's High Street
Fire swept 223 to 229 High Street in Glasgow on 4 May 2021. The Old College Bar, whose frontage claimed 1515 and whose licensing record starts in 1812, was not trading at the time and came down six weeks later.
6 May
1971
King's Tavern joins the National Register
The certification on the nomination papers for King's Tavern at Natchez is stamped 6 May 1971, the day the house entered the National Register. The same papers have Richard King granted a licence to keep a public house in 1799, ten years later than the date the tavern claims.
8 May
1950
The Angel and Royal is listed
Historic England listed the Angel and Royal at Grantham at Grade I on 8 May 1950, opening the entry by calling it one of the few remaining English medieval inns and dating the street front late in the fourteenth century. The hotel claims 1203, and the same entry hedges King John's visit as tradition.
10 May
2002
The Fortune of War is listed
The Fortune of War in The Rocks was entered on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 10 May 2002, as item 01547. What the entry gives, in place of a much-repeated claim, is a chain of named licensees.
12 May
1268
A tavern in a Silesian charter
Duke Vladislav of Opole confirmed the Benedictines of Orlová in their rights on 12 May 1268, among them a tavern at Těrlicko. That line is the first written mention behind the Jaškovská krčma.
14 May
1974
The Seven Stars is listed
The Seven Stars behind the Royal Courts of Justice was designated Grade II on 14 May 1974, as Seven Stars Public House. Historic England reads painted brick over a partial timber frame, perhaps seventeenth-century in origin and dated 1602 — the year the pub puts in its own web address.
20 May
1965
The Old Ship Inn is listed
The Old Ship at the Skinnergate in Perth stands in a High Street range added to the list at category B on 20 May 1965. The pub dates itself to 1665, when ships still tied up at the foot of the street; the gable to George Street is dated 1774.
22 May
1969
Two Exmoor inns listed the same day
The Luttrell Arms at Dunster was listed at Grade II* on 22 May 1969 and the Ship at Porlock at Grade II the same day, a few miles apart under Exmoor. The Luttrell Arms is late medieval; the Ship's thirteenth century is tradition and its fabric reads as sixteenth or seventeenth.
23 May
1984
A smoking dog, inscribed
France inscribed the shopfront and the interior decoration of Au Chien qui Fume in Paris as a historic monument by an order of 23 May 1984, the carved wooden counter among them. Four glass panels outside carry smoking dogs above lettering for onion soup, snails, salmon and the orchestra.
26 May
1676
The Southwark fire
Fire began near St Margaret's Hill at three in the morning on 26 May 1676 and took some five hundred houses, the George among them. The galleried range still standing in Southwark was rebuilt the following year.
27 May
1949
The Lamb is listed
Historic England listed the Lamb in Eastbourne's old town on 27 May 1949, as The Lamb Inn, Ye Lambe Hotel. The entry reads a sixteenth-century timber frame spoiled by roughcast between the beams, where the press repeats 1180 and the pub says fourteenth century.
31 May
1837
South Australia's first publican's licence
South Australia issued its first publican's licence on 31 May 1837, for Guthrie's Hotel on Currie Street in Adelaide, renamed the Edinburgh Castle in 1839. The building trading there now is an 1878-79 rebuild.
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.