Historical Pub Walk

Historical Pub Walk

The South Bank

Just as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales pilgrims did, we start in Southwark. Head west along Borough High Street to the galleried George Inn. Mentioned in Dickens's Little Dorrit, there has been an inn (where Will Shakespeare drank) here since the 16th century. Back toward London Bridge, wander through Borough Market. The sights are packed in here, as you pass Southwark Cathedral on your right, the Golden Hinde replica, and The Clink Prison museum on your way to the Anchor. Although it was updated in 2008, it dates from 1775 and is thought to be where writer Samuel Pepys stood as he observed the 1666 fire of London, which he called "a most horrid malicious bloody flame."

Across the Thames

Head over Southwark Bridge —with St. Paul's Cathedral in your sights—to The City with its financial centers and maze of streets. Ye Olde Watling was originally built just before the great fire, and it was destroyed within days. Rebuilt around 1668, again in 1901, and then again in 1947 after the Blitz, it is named after a Roman road, on which it stands.

Down toward Blackfriars Bridge, pass the College of Arms, where you can register your heraldic coat of arms. Continue on to the exquisite Black Friar. The 19th-century pub's Arts and Crafts interior was remodeled in 1905: the sculptures, mosaics, and metal reliefs all allude to the friars who once lived here.

Head up Blackfriars Lane to the "haunted" Viaduct Tavern,opened by Queen Victoria in 1869. Cells in the basement are reputedly part of the long-since-demolished Newgate Gaol (where the Old Bailey Criminal Court opposite now stands).

Bloomsbury

Walk over Holborn Viaduct into this scholarly neighborhood to Ye Olde Mitre,hidden in an alley at the side of Hatton Gardens, dating from 1547 and rebuilt around 1772. A stone mitre from the Bishop of Ely's palace gatehouse is built into one of the walls, and there is also the preserved trunk of a cherry tree that Elizabeth I supposedly danced around.

Turn up Fulwood Place, and if it's open (before 2:30) cut through Gray's Inn Field,near legal London's barristers at the Inns of the Court, to the Lamb. This Victorian pub, near Dickens's House and rumored to be one of the author's haunts, has plenty of original fittings, including privacy (or "snob") screens that customers pivot open or closed. Head west along Great Ormand Street to the Queen's Larder. When George III was being treated by a doctor who lived in this square, his wife, Queen Charlotte, reputedly rented out the cellar and prepared his meals for him in the 1770s. Just north is the Russell Square tube stop, or you can continue on to the British Museum for culture of a different kind.