A Tipple in Time

Some cultures commiserate at the saloon, the teahouse, the wine bar, or the café. In Britain, the dearest (and usually nearest) drinking establishment is the pub.

Many of the most iconic examples of this tradition are in London, where some of them have endured for up to five centuries without becoming tourist traps. Maybe Dickens or Shakespeare never drank there, but the city’s lesser-known historic gems are worth the extra work it can take to find them. “The welcome is warmer, the beer better kept, and a carefully curated ambience keeps the ‘rowdies’ at arm’s length,” John Warland writes in Local Legends: The Hidden Pubs of London.

Warland knows whereof he speaks. As the founder of tour company Liquid History, he’s led “educational” pub crawls through several London neighborhoods for 13 years. Hidden Pubs, which was published in the U.S. in July — and features photographs by Horst A. Friedrichs — is his second book about the English capital’s historic drinking establishments.

For clarity’s sake, we are not talking about gastropubs here. With a few exceptions, the food runs along the lines of reheated meat pies, Scotch eggs, and crisps (potato chips). “English tapas — its main job being to keep us vertical,” Warland explained on a recent pub crawl.

Many of London’s legendary pubs are now under corporate ownership. “A ‘pubco’ will keep old pubs [looking] the same, and for that we can be grateful,” Warland says. But physical preservation does not always maintain the human essence of a place. “Free houses,” as independents are often called, are quirkier and humbler. They’re closer to that ideal of domestic coziness that separates the pub from the American-style bar or nightclub — and worth prioritizing on any London visit.

“You walk in, the fire is on, lights are glowing, there’s a dog on the floor. It’s a magical welcome, a home away from home,” Warland says. Some worry that the magic is fading, as soaring real-estate prices, the rise of remote work, and other factors make the future of many of the city’s most charming and hospitable pubs uncertain. For the moment, though, there are plenty of these richly atmospheric places for a visitor to duck into. They’re especially inviting as a retreat from London weather and in the afternoon, when low-key regulars chat or read quietly over a pint of bitter. 

THE HOLY TAVERN
Clerkenwell

“This is the best fake in London,” Warland says — an exception to the rule that generations of fine aging and ad hoc adaptations can’t be replicated in one fell swoop. Sure, the Holy Tavern building dates to 1720, but the bohemian-feeling pub within it is only around 30 years old. There is a naturally lit front room, dim back rooms, a wooden-benched snug, and even an interior crow’s-nest balcony for two. The greenish-gray walls are trimmed in a shade of orange butterscotch that evokes centuries-old nicotine stains. The upper mantles are festooned with dried hops vines, giving the place the quality of a still life, and old bottles are frosted with hard candle wax. The kitchen here serves fish-and-chips and other robust pub food, and Tuesday evenings are candlelit only. But the vaguely coffeehouse vibe makes the Holy Tavern especially appropriate for day drinking; try the locally brewed nitro porter on tap in lieu of the expected Guinness stout. 

THE COCKPIT
City of London

“Some historic London pubs put their goods on display, like a department store, but the Cockpit has its back to the world,” Warland says. Despite the fact that it’s just a couple blocks from St. Paul’s Cathedral — whose bell ringers are among the regulars — visitors rarely stumble upon it, partly because it’s on a nondescript sloped street where you’d never expect to find a pub. You enter at the corner and into a surprisingly open-plan lounge that’s lush with red carpeting and velvet upholstery; striding up the two steps to the bar area feels a bit like going onstage. “It’s another example of this higgledy-piggledy non-design that the big pubcos can never replicate, because they’re all control freaks,” Warland notes. The assorted rooster paintings nod to the 200-year-old pub’s early days as an actual cockfighting venue.

THE NELL GWYNNE TAVERN
Covent Garden

The West End swells with revelers and theatergoers ready to pop into whichever watering hole next presents itself. “To be any good in this part of town, a pub needs to be tucked away,” Warland says. That’s what the Nell Gwynne is: located off Covent Garden’s main walking streets and down a snickelway, concealed from the uninitiated. Showbiz workers, including the occasional celebrity, seek it out for daytime and post-show pints — although beer no longer reigns supreme at this colorful 1890s pub. Built on the site of an older tavern that was patronized by the 17th-century stage actress and royal mistress from which it takes its name, “the Nell” is a welcoming riot of Victorian wallpaper, plaster ceilings, and chipped woodwork. Appropriately, the dominant color in this scheme is racy red.

THE NAGS HEAD
Belgravia

High and low mix at this pocket-size split-level mews pub in posh Belgravia. Upstairs, beer flows from 150-year-old porcelain hand pumps. Downstairs, in a former horse stable, the walls and ceilings are covered with flags, plaques, and other vintage ephemera. Much of it has a military theme, a tip-off to the preferences of owner Kevin Moran, a former member of the Royal Scots Guards who optimizes the pubgoing experience by enforcing house rules — no cell phones, no roller bags, hang up your coats — with an iron fist. “Kevin is a gentleman and a pussycat, assuming you stay on the right side of him,” Warland says. “He’s one of those idiosyncratic characters, a rare reminder of what landlords [publicans] used to offer as community gatekeepers. He used to drink with Richard Burton and Richard Harris, and an hour in his company can be one of the best in London.”

THE CROSS KEYS
Covent Garden

Behind a green veil of potted and hanging plants awaits the dimly lit drinking room of this 1840s pub. Guests sit on stools and wraparound chesterfield banquettes amid a volume of bric-a-brac — copper pots, statuary, taxidermy, Beatles memorabilia — that leaves barely an inch of empty wall space. Three minutes from the Royal Opera House, it’s in a Covent Garden location that a visitor is likely to be near anyway. “Yet it’s a largely tourist-free one-room wonder — just a great place to sink a few with friends,” Warland says. The menu focuses on approachable international lagers more than old-school cask ales.

Darrell Hartman is the author of Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media. He lives in New York City and Livingston Manor, N.Y.