White Hart, London — claims 1216

White Hart

191 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5QD

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Oct 2026

White Hart claims 1216. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed

1216

First record

none found

Building

c.1912

The building. Rebuilt 1912 for the Red Lion Brewery of Hoare and Company.

Food

Late night

The claim

The White Hart stands on the corner where Drury Lane meets High Holborn, a narrow frontage of 1912 opening into one long bar that runs until two in the morning at weekends. Its history page claims licensed premises on this corner in 1216 and cites the Old Bailey archives for it. The earliest papers anyone has produced are of 1537 and 1650, and both describe a dwelling called the Whyte Harte.

What the records show

The year is the pub's own, and it names its authority: the history page says the Old Bailey archives show this corner to have been the first and oldest licensed premises in London in 1216, and the front page carries the second half of that as a banner. On London quoted the claim in July 2022 and CAMRA's entry repeats it. The authority cannot carry it. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, the published accounts of trials at the court, run from 1674 to 1913, so whatever stands in them is not a licence granted four and a half centuries earlier. Nor was there a licence of that kind to grant: a keeper of an alehouse first had to hold one from the justices under the Ale Houses Act of 1551, which had royal assent in April 1552, three and a third centuries after the date on the claim. The earliest documents anybody has produced for the name are three hundred years later than the claim and describe a dwelling rather than a drinking house: in 1537 Henry VIII acquired from the Master of Burton Lazars a messuage, meaning a house, called the Whyte Harte with eighteen acres of pasture, and a survey of Crown lands in 1650 records a small hall, a parlour, a kitchen, a larder and a cellar beneath. A White Hart stands on Morgan's map of 1682 as number 101, with an alley running down to Drury Lane. The pub says houses of the name have been here since the fifteenth century and points at no record for that either, so the claim is tradition: nothing traced records drink sold on this corner at any medieval date, and the house is graded on that and not on the age of its story. Two details of the story can be checked and one of them fails. Karl Marx did lecture in the upstairs room in 1847, when the Communist League met here. Dick Turpin, whom the history page sends in for a drink on the way to his hanging in 1739, was hanged that April at York, a fortnight's ride away. The building is a rebuild of 1912 for the Red Lion Brewery of Hoare and Company. The National Heritage List for England was searched within seventy metres of the corner on 24 October 2026 and holds no entry for 191 Drury Lane; the nearest on the street is 186 and 187, Grade II, listed on 15 January 1973. Trading rests on two registers rather than on the pub's word: Camden's licensing list, refreshed on 23 October 2026, records a premises licence in force at the address in the name of Mitchells & Butlers Leisure Retail, and CAMRA surveyed the house on 20 April 2026.

Dated evidence for White Hart, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1216	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1912	Present building	CAMRA pub record

What to look for inside

Rebuilt in 1912 for the Red Lion Brewery of Hoare and Company
Karl Marx lectured in the upstairs room in 1847, when the Communist League met here
One of the few houses in Covent Garden serving until 2am on Friday and Saturday

Visiting

White Hart is in London, England, at 191 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5QD. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

whitehartdrurylane.co.uk Directions in your maps app