How many London pubs can you name where the door still closes behind you and the 21st century stays outside? The Princess Louise in Holborn is one of them. Walk in and the first thing you notice is the silence. No music. No television. No one shouting into a phone. Just the soft clink of glasses and the low murmur of conversation drifting out from the wooden snugs. London has roughly 3,500 pubs. Most will pour you a drink. These five will give you back an hour of your life that technology stole.
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1. The Princess Louise, Holborn
The interior, mahogany bar, etched glass, Minton tile floor, private snugs with closing doors, is the best-preserved Victorian pub interior in London. Built in 1872 and restored by Samuel Smith’s Brewery in 2007, the Princess Louise operates on principles most modern pubs have abandoned. No music. No television. The conversation is the entertainment. The beer, Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter at roughly £3.80 a pint, is among the cheapest in central London and unreasonably good at that price. The snugs, small enclosed wooden booths with doors that actually close, are a Victorian invention that gives you privacy in a public space. There are perhaps a dozen left in London. half of them are here. 208 High Holborn. Open until 11pm.
2. The Mayflower, Rotherhithe
Built in 1620, the year the Mayflower sailed from Rotherhithe to the New World. This is the oldest pub on the Thames, and the wooden jetty outside still rises and falls with the tide. The interior has barely changed in a century: low ceilings, dark wood, a fireplace that has been burning longer than anyone alive can remember. The pub claims a licence to sell American postage stamps, a privilege granted by the US embassy. The stamps are framed on the wall. The beer rotates through regional breweries, expect something from Harvey’s, Adnams, or a Kentish microbrewery. The view from the jetty takes in the Thames, the City in the distance, and the occasional seal. The walk from Rotherhithe Overground station is ten minutes along the river. You will get lost. That is part of the experience. 117 Rotherhithe Street.
3. The Blackfriar, Blackfriars
An Art Nouveau masterpiece shaped like a wedge, squeezed between a railway bridge and the office blocks of Queen Victoria Street. Built in 1875 on the site of a Dominican friary, the interior is a riot of marble, copper, and mosaic, a frieze of jolly friars circles the walls carrying inscriptions like “Haste is slow” and “Industry is all.” The fireplace is carved like a monk’s cell. The vaulted ceiling is covered in mother-of-pearl mosaics. It is, by some margin, the most remarkable pub interior in Britain. Sir John Betjeman led the campaign that saved it from demolition in the 1960s. Nicholson’s operates the pub now; the cask ale selection runs to six or eight rotating pumps, all well-kept. The food is fine. You are not here for the food. You are here to drink a pint of something local under a mosaic monk. 174 Queen Victoria Street. Two minutes from Blackfriars station.
4. The Lamb, Bloomsbury
A Victorian pub on Lamb’s Conduit Street, a street of independent bookshops, cheesemongers, and tailors that has resisted chain-store homogenisation with quiet militancy. Built in 1729 and rebuilt in 1898, the interior still has its etched glass, horseshoe bar, and sunburst ceiling light. The upstairs room has its own fireplace. Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes drank here. The hand-pumped Young’s Bitter is the house beer, kept in perfect condition. The snugs on the ground floor seat four comfortably and six intimately. The pub does not do food beyond crisps and pork pies. This is a drinking pub in the traditional sense, and the atmosphere, conversation, the rustle of a newspaper, the gentle hum of a Tuesday evening, is the product of that focus. 94 Lamb’s Conduit Street. Nearest Tube: Russell Square.
5. The Spaniards Inn, Hampstead
A coaching inn built in 1585 on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Dick Turpin is said to have drunk here. Keats allegedly wrote Ode to a Nightingale in the garden, probably apocryphal, but he lived nearby and he did drink here. The tollgate that gave the pub its name still stands on the road outside. Inside: beams, fireplaces, low ceilings, and the accumulated warmth of 438 years of continuous service. The garden is the largest pub garden in London, with a view across the Heath that justifies the 15-minute uphill walk from Hampstead Tube station. Summer weekends fill the garden by 2pm. Winter drives everyone inside to the fireplaces. The beer is Greene King, not the most adventurous but well-kept. The roast, the pies, the usual gastropub staples are above average. Before a pint, walk across the Heath from Parliament Hill: the London skyline, the Shard, the Gherkin, St Paul’s, all free. Spaniards Road. Open until 11pm.
Which London pub did we miss, the one where the landlord knows your order before you sit down and the fire has been burning since you were born?
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