Cream corner tavern with brown quoins, an iron balcony and painted lettering including 1807

Photo: Stilgherrian · licence

Hope and Anchor Tavern

65 Macquarie Street at Market Place, Hobart TAS 7000

Grade B · Building datedTrading · checked Sept 2026

Hope and Anchor Tavern claims 1807. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed: 1807
First record: none found
Building: c.1820

The building. Early 19th century; enlarged c. 1820 and c. 1840.

Pub website Directions

Haunted
Food
Craft beer
Heritage listed
Antiques

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 219 years claimed with no document found yet. Diamond: the standing building, dated from its fabric to about 1820.

The claim

A Georgian tavern on Macquarie Street that stakes the boldest claim in Australian drinking history: a public house on the Hobart Rivulet since 1807. Its dark rooms are crammed with antiques and maritime relics, and seafood and burgers come out of the kitchen. A local brewery took over the lease in 2025, but guest taps and Guinness still pour.

What the records show

Robert Knopwood's diary for 25 July 1807 records Hopkins opening a public house at the Sign of the Whale Fishery, and the ABC has reported doubt about whether that house stood on this site. The premises went on the Tasmanian Heritage Register in 1998, on the strength of their archaeological importance. The trade has not been unbroken: the pub was closed to the public from 2008 to 2014, and earlier in the 1980s, with the licence kept alive, so continuously licensed is not the same claim as continuously trading. The house itself claims to be the oldest pub in Australia and says it has served food and drink since 1807; New Norfolk's Bush Inn makes the rival claim. Hobart Brewing Co has held the lease since 2025 and the doors are open seven days from noon.

Dated evidence for Hope and Anchor Tavern, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1807	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1820	Present building	Building fabric

What to look for inside

Knopwood diary entry of 25 July 1807 cited as founding evidence
Long-running 'oldest pub' rivalry with the Bush Inn, New Norfolk
Closed 2008-2014 with licence retained
Taken over by Hobart Brewing Co in 2025

Visiting

Hope and Anchor Tavern is in Hobart, Australia, at 65 Macquarie Street at Market Place, Hobart TAS 7000. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

hopeandanchor.au Directions in your maps app

Sources

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026

Run this pub? There is a badge for it

Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.

How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.

Above: the record · Below: what readers rememberThe record ends here

Raise a glass

Nobody has raised a glass to this pub yetNo glasses raised yet

One per person. It is a show of hands, not evidence.

A glass is one per person, and it never changes a date or a grade — it is a show of hands, not evidence.

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The snug

What people remember about Hope and Anchor Tavern

Nobody has written about this pub yet. These are readers’ own recollections, not our records — we check documents, not memories, and a memory never moves a date or a grade.

Were you a regular here?

We are after the things a record cannot hold: the landlord’s name, what was behind the bar, the room that is not there any more, the year the fire was moved. One paragraph is plenty.

The snug opens shortly. Until it does, send it to hello@oldpubs.com and we will put it on this page with your name on it.

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