The Old Crown

High Street, Deritend (Digbeth), Birmingham

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Oct 2026

The Old Crown claims 1368. The records say 1626.

Claimed: 1368
First record: 1626
Building: c.1450

The building. Timber-framed, c. 1450-1500 (dated evidence to 1492).

Directions

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 258 years the pub claims but no document confirms. Solid: 400 years on record. Diamond: the standing building, dated from its fabric to about 1450.

The claim

A black-and-white timber frame surviving among Digbeth's warehouses, the Old Crown is among Birmingham's oldest secular buildings. It claims 1368, though its fabric belongs to the late 15th century. Saved from demolition by Victorian antiquarian Joshua Toulmin Smith and restored in 1998, it now pours pints in a district better known for music venues.

What the records show

The Old Crown keeps the 1368 itself: it held a 655th birthday in September 2023 and calls itself Birmingham's oldest pub. The date is unconfirmed; the timber-framed building is dated to the later 15th century, with evidence pointing to about 1492, and was noted by Leland in 1538. The earliest documented use as an inn is 1626, with 'the sign of the Crowne' recorded from 1666. The 1626 is carried by Wikipedia, which cites a bond of 20 October 1626 from Thomas and Richard Fetherston to Thomas Dixon alias Bayleys, innholder, held in Birmingham Archives and Heritage as MS 3881/42, and takes the sign of the Crowne from a marriage settlement of 1666. Neither document has been read here.

Dated evidence for The Old Crown, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1368	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1450	Present building	Building fabric
1626	First record of a drinking house here	Wikipedia, citing a 1626 bond in Birmingham Archives

What to look for inside

Noted by John Leland in 1538 as a 'mansion house of tymber'
Rescued from demolition three times in the 1850s-60s
A 38 ft well was rediscovered in 1994

Visiting

The Old Crown is in Birmingham, England, at High Street, Deritend (Digbeth), Birmingham. 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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Sources

The Old Crown in 1991, its timber front intact but the ground floor whitewashed and shuttered, seen across the road — Then and now
Photographed about 1991, and today. Deritend in 1991, when the pub stood empty and boarded.
Every pub we have a pair for

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

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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 Old Crown

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.