The claim
A handsome sandstone corner pub in Millers Point, built as a house around 1836 and licensed in the early 1840s. It claims to be Sydney's oldest continuously licensed hotel still in its original building. Restored in the 1980s using an 1852 photograph, it has brewed its own ales on site since 1986, so the beer you drink was made downstairs.
What the records show
The land came from a Crown grant to the plasterer William Wells dated 14 May 1836 and part of a grant in trust to Richard Driver of 30 November 1840; Wells is believed to have lived here until 1842, when the liquor licence was granted. The State Heritage Register calls the Lord Nelson the oldest working licensed hotel in the city and dates it from that licence of June 1842, while the pub dates its own licence to 1 May 1841. Either way it has traded in its original sandstone ever since, and a brewery was added in 1986. Two more things the register records: the house was one of only two hotels in Millers Point kept by the Sydney Harbour Trust when the area was resumed during the plague of 1900, and it is one of three hotel buildings in the city in the Old Colonial Regency style. The pub's own year is not only its own. The Dictionary of Sydney, the city's scholarly reference work, archived in 2021, enters the house as a three-storey sandstone hotel in Colonial Regency style at 19 Kent Street, gives its construction as 1836 to 1840, describes it as thought to have been built as Wells's home on the land granted to him in 1836, and calls it one of the oldest licensed hotels in the city and one of the few houses in Millers Point kept when the quarter was demolished after the plague of 1900. The Dictionary also records the green plaque fixed here between 1984 and 1988 in the Sydney Green Plaques project for the Bicentenary, put up by the Royal Australian Historical Society with the Rural Bank of New South Wales and the City of Sydney: its wording has the hotel first licensed in 1841 under William Wells, a former convict, and says the building is believed to be the oldest hotel building surviving in Sydney. So 1841 is carried by two publishers besides the pub, and 1842 by the register; the disagreement is a year in the paperwork of a single licence and not a dispute about the house.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1841 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1836 | Present building | Building fabric |
| 1841 | First record of a drinking house here | NSW State Heritage Register |
What to look for inside
- On-site brewery since 1986
- Restoration guided by an 1852 photograph
- Built by ex-convict William Wells
Visiting
Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel is in Sydney, Australia, at 19 Kent Street, Millers Point NSW. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Nelson_Hotel,_Millers_Point
- lordnelsonbrewery.com/history
- apps.environment.nsw.gov.au/dpcheritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5045112
- dictionaryofsydney.org/building/lord_nelson_hotel
- dictionaryofsydney.org/artefact/royal_australian_historical_society_green_plaque_41_lord_nelson_hotel
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
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