The claim
A two-storey timber tavern in Thorndon that once stood at the harbour's edge, before the 1855 earthquake and reclamation pushed the shoreline away. The Dominion Post has called it New Zealand's oldest watering hole; what the records show is a tavern of 1840, rebuilt on the same Mulgrave Street site after an 1866 fire. Katherine Mansfield was a regular, and her poems now hang in the dining room.
What the records show
Heritage New Zealand's list entry for the Thistle Inn, number 1439, a Category 1 historic place entered on 27 July 1988, was read on 17 September 2026 and settles the 1840. It records that the first Thistle Inn opened on town acre 515 in October 1840, that the section had become the property of Dudley Sinclair by ballot on 1 August 1839, and that the landlord was transferred by Sinclair in September 1841 — a documented inn at the year the house claims, which is what grade A asks for, so the grade moves up from B. The entry then explains the building: the 1840 inn burned down in 1866 and the present two-storey timber building was put up the same year, clad in rusticated weatherboards, with a west wing by the architect Thomas Turnbull added in 1896-97 and later modifications stripped back in a renovation of 2004. It notes the site's position on the old shoreline, a few yards from the sea until the reclamation of 1876, the sloping bar floor that sailors braced against, and Katherine Mansfield's 1907 story 'Leves Amores', set in the inn. Heritage New Zealand calls it one of the oldest hotels still operating in the country, not the oldest, and the claim to the second liquor licence issued in New Zealand is the inn's own and has not been traced to a licence record.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1840 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1866 | Present building | Building fabric |
| 1840 | First record of a drinking house here | Heritage New Zealand |
What to look for inside
- Claims New Zealand's second liquor licence
- Rebuilt after 1866 fire
- Katherine Mansfield connection
- Shoreline moved by the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake and reclamation
Visiting
Thistle Inn is in Wellington, New Zealand, at 3 Mulgrave Street, Thorndon, Wellington. 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/Thistle_Inn
- www.thistleinn.co.nz/the-thistle-inn
- www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/go-nz-where-is-new-zealands-oldest-pub/WBAGX5IHUNX2EOUVI5SLMTMY6Q/
- www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/75032447/thorndons-thistle-inn-still-a-wellington-bastion-of-booze-and-bonhomie-after-175-years---150-years-of-news
- www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/1439/1439
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
Run this pub? There is a badge for it
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.
.jpg){kind=link}