Pint Passport
Weatherboarded pub on a wet street corner under grey cloud, hanging sign on a cast-iron lamp postPhoto: N Chadwick · licence
  • White weatherboarded corner pub at dusk, lit lamp and a painted coat-of-arms board on the wall

Photo: Chris Whippet · licence

No. 26 of the Top 100

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The Coopers Arms

10 St Margaret's Street, Rochester ME1 1TL

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Oct 2026

The Coopers Arms claims 1189. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1189
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. Timber-framed public house, C17 or earlier, with C18, C19 and C20 alterations; jettied first floor — we give it no single date because Historic England gives C17 or earlier, which is not a datable year.

Pub website Directions
  • Real ale
  • Food
  • Beer garden
  • Legend

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
Claims 1189; no early record found.

Hatched: 837 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

A weatherboarded and plastered house tucked behind Rochester's cathedral, with a jettied upper floor, two small bars and a garden at the back. Cask beer is the point here, and the walls carry the pub's account of monks, dissolution and a licence in 1543. The Medway riverside and the castle are a short walk downhill.

What the records show

The Coopers Arms tells its own story carefully: built in the reign of Richard I, left derelict after the dissolution of the monasteries, and opened as an inn in 1543. Historic England is less generous, listing a timber-framed house of C17 or earlier with later alterations, and no 12th-century fabric is described. Nothing was found to document either 1189 or 1543. The pub stands beside the cathedral precinct, and the tradition that monks built and used it is what gives the 12th-century date its long life.

What to look for inside

  • Stands beside the cathedral precinct in old Rochester
  • The pub's own history gives 1543 for its opening as an inn
  • Jettied timber-framed front under plaster and weatherboard

Visiting

The Coopers Arms is in Rochester, England, at 10 St Margaret's Street, Rochester ME1 1TL. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

thecoopersarms.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

  1. historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1145838
  2. camra.org.uk/pubs/coopers-arms-rochester-167803
  3. www.thecoopersarms.co.uk/
  4. www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol4/pp153-182
  5. ratings.food.gov.uk/business/609866

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

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Checked by OldPubs: The Coopers Arms claims 1189

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

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The snug

What people remember about the Coopers Arms

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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