The claim
Set back in a courtyard between Silver Street and Bowlalley Lane in Hull's Old Town, this Artisan Mannerist house of about 1660 became a pub in the 1730s. Its upstairs Plotting Parlour is named for a Civil War plot the building is too young to have hosted; CAMRA's Hull branch attaches the room instead to 1688, and the aldermen's plan to unseat the Catholic governor appointed by James II. Two bars, a large beer garden, cask ales and a long whisky list make it a local favourite.
What the records show
Wikipedia records the present house as about 1660 in Artisan Mannerist style, attributed to William Catlyn, with a house on the site in 1550 and pub use only from the 1730s; the 1730 is decade-level rather than a dated licence. CAMRA's Hull and East Yorkshire branch agrees — licensed premises since the eighteenth century, parts of the building from the seventeenth — and gives the interior three stars on the national inventory, outstanding national historic importance, for a remodelling of 1881 by the local architects Smith & Brodrick that turned a merchant's house into an idealised 'Olde Englishe' inn with hugely enlarged brick fireplaces. The branch is blunt about the upstairs Plotting Parlour: the Civil War story cannot be right, because the building post-dates the war, and the plot the room fits is the one of 1688 against the Catholic governor James II had appointed. The smoke room was refurbished in 2023 and its disused built-in telephone kiosk survives.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1550 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1660 | Present building | Building fabric |
| 1730 | First record of a drinking house here | Historic England |
What to look for inside
- 'Plotting Parlour' tied by CAMRA to the 1688 plot against James II's governor
- Three stars on CAMRA's national inventory of historic pub interiors
- Remodelled in 1881 by the Hull architects Smith & Brodrick
- Reputedly haunted; a skull found in the building is part of its lore
Visiting
Ye Olde White Harte is in Kingston upon Hull, England, at 25 Silver Street, Hull HU1 1JG. 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/Ye_Olde_White_Harte
- www.yeoldewhiteharte.com/
- the-yorkshireman.com/yorkshires-oldest-pubs/
- camra.org.uk/pubs/olde-white-harte-hull-181226
- ratings.food.gov.uk/business/192658
- historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197696
Then and now
Photographed about 1982, and today. The alley off Silver Street in 1982.
Photo: Bernard Sharp · licence
Photo: Stephen Craven · licenceKnow 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.
