Old George Inn, Newcastle upon Tyne

Old George Inn

Old George Yard, off Cloth Market, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1EZ

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

Old George Inn claims 1582. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1582

First record

none found

Building

no single date

The building. Early C17 or earlier house with considerable alteration in the C18 and early C19 (Historic England 1024823). Brick, mainly rendered and part painted, with rubble stone to the rear and under the carriage arch, and Welsh slate roofs; a three-part front, two six-panel doors in pedimented doorcases, sash windows with glazing bars, four of them tripartite, and a long irregular rear elevation of large rubble stonework. Inside, a wide fireplace under a shallow segmental chamfered stone arch with rounded corners and slightly vermiculated voussoirs; the main rooms have stout, fairly close-set joists possibly of the early C18, and the bar at the east end has stout shallow joists the register calls probably original.

Real ale

Food

Dog friendly

Beer garden

The claim

Down a cobbled yard off the Cloth Market, Newcastle's oldest pub claims a building date of 1582 and a royal regular: Charles I is said to have visited while held captive in the town. Creaking corridors and stairs lead to period rooms, while the yard hosts live music and the bars show plenty of sport.

What the records show

Historic England lists the house grade II as early seventeenth century or earlier, much altered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth — a bracket that would take in the 1582 the pub and CAMRA both give, without documenting it. No licence or deed has been traced, so the year is still somebody's assertion rather than a record. The full list entry was read on 17 September 2026 and adds the part of the building a drinker stands in: the bar at the east end has stout, shallow joists that the register calls probably original, where the main rooms on both floors have close-set joists it puts at possibly early eighteenth century and roofs it says were renewed in the eighteenth. The rest of the description is of a three-part rendered brick front under Welsh slate, two six-panel doors in pedimented doorcases, sashes with glazing bars of which four are tripartite, the carriage arch on stout beams over rubble walls with two segment-headed doorways, a long irregular rear elevation of large rubble stonework patched in places, one original window surround, and a large chimney breast holding a wide fireplace under a shallow segmental chamfered stone arch with rounded corners and slightly vermiculated voussoirs. Two small corrections come with the reading. The register's statutory name is The Old George Public House, not the Old George Inn this page uses, and it carries group value. And the designation date is not quite what this page had: Historic England's own field gives 5 September 1977, while the reference line inside the entry reads 6/9/77 — the field is what the register publishes as the date first listed, so that is the date shown here, with the discrepancy said rather than tidied away. The story that Charles I drank here in 1646 while the Scots held him in Newcastle, and that the chair he sat in stands in the Charles I Room, is tradition the pub tells.

What to look for inside

Tradition that Charles I drank here during his captivity in Newcastle
Oldest pub claim in Newcastle

Visiting

Old George Inn is in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, at Old George Yard, off Cloth Market, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1EZ. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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