The claim
Just outside the Westgate on St Dunstan's Street, the Unicorn is a restored timber frame with a brick ground floor and a garden behind that catches the sun. Five handpumps, one of them for cider, and bar billiards in the corner; CAMRA gives the interior one star on its national inventory. Kent's record of historic buildings follows the house from a sixteenth-century dwelling through an alehouse licence to the licensing list of 1692.
What the records show
Three parties print three different years, and the pub itself prints the earliest and the latest. CAMRA's Canterbury branch calls the Unicorn a comfortable old 1604 pub and the booking pages repeat that year; the house's own history page names no 1604 at all. It has the building put up in 1593 as a house for Robert Budden, a woollen draper who owned two other properties in the city, sold by his widow in 1638 to the leather merchant Solomon Buesden, and then says that Solomon's son Isaac applied in 1664 for a licence to sell ales from the premises, after which it was known as an ale house in St Dunstan's. Kent's record of historic buildings tells the same story from the other side: a dwelling house on the site in the sixteenth century owned by Robert Budden, an ale licence applied for in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Unicorn in the licensing list of 1692 and the billeting list offering the inn four soldiers the year after, a sale to the Longport brewer Philip Watson in 1763 and two spells in the eighteenth century with a reputation as a bawdy house. So the fabric reaches the claimed date and the drinking does not: the house of 1593 is of the right age for a 1604 claim, and the first record of ale sold here is sixty years later. Historic England lists it Grade II, from 7 September 1973, describing a much-restored timber frame with a brick ground floor and a first floor that oversails. CAMRA rates the interior one star on its national inventory of historic pub interiors and counts five handpumps, one of them for cider. The house opens at noon every day and the kitchen does not start until five on a Tuesday; Canterbury's food register inspected it on 8 September 2025.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1604 | Claimed founding | CAMRA |
| c.1593 | Present building | The pub's own history, agreeing with Kent's record of historic buildings |
| 1664 | First record of a drinking house here | The pub's own history page, on Isaac Buesden's licence of 1664 |
What to look for inside
- One star on CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors
- Ale licence applied for in 1664, by the pub's own history
- Named in Canterbury's licensing list of 1692
Visiting
The Unicorn Inn is in Canterbury, England, at 61 St Dunstan's Street, Canterbury CT2 8BS. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- unicorninn.com/history/
- unicorninn.com/
- canterbury.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=264996
- heritage.kent.gov.uk/Monument/MKE24925
- heritage.kent.gov.uk/Designation/DKE10728
- historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1260311
- ratings.food.gov.uk/business/1102531
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Oct 2026
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