Edinburgh's pubs claim older dates than Edinburgh's archives will support, and working out which is which is half the pleasure. One stop out at Duddingston, then the Old Town closes in: oysters, a hanged deacon, fiddles, and a judge down a close.
- 1 · The Cold Open
The Sheep Heid Inn
The sign says 1360 and the heritage listing repeats it. Then the same listing prints its own sources: two Ordnance Survey maps, three books, and an undated leaflet written by the pub's own manager. Nothing in it predates 1854, and the part of the record that describes actual fabric says mid nineteenth century. What is genuinely old here is out the back and listed in its own right, an 1880 skittle alley with a timber gravity ramp that returns the balls to you. Book it. Then take a cask ale in a room that does not need to be six hundred years old.
the building is mid 19th century, the skittle alley 1880 · Mon-Fri from noon, Sat and Sun from 11.30am, till 11pm · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Café Royal
Robert Hume had this put up in 1861 as a showroom for gas and sanitary fittings, and it was converted before it ever opened as one. The Café Royal moved in on 8 July 1863 from a predecessor across the road, which is where its 1826 belongs. It is Category A listed and the listing is mostly about the inside: nine Doulton tile pictures of inventors drawn by John Eyre, a red marble oyster counter, and eight stained glass windows of Victorian sportsmen. The oysters come from Cumbrae and they shuck a thousand a week.
in this building since 8 July 1863, Category A inside and out · Sun-Wed 11am till 11pm, Thu-Sat 9am till 1am · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Deacon Brodie's Tavern
William Brodie was a cabinetmaker, a deacon of his trade guild and a housebreaker after dark, and they hanged him in 1788. The pub took his name a century after that. Edinburgh's building control, the Dean of Guild Court, recorded the public house being formed here on 18 October 1894, inside a tenement already two hundred years old. The 1806 on the sign is in no record we could reach. Category A listed, and the compartmented ceiling with its plaster roses and thistles is listed with it. Nicholson's Pale Ale and Stewart 80 shilling on the pumps, and drink downstairs rather than up.
the pub formed 18 October 1894, the tenement early 18th century · from 11am, till midnight, 1am Fri and Sat · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Sandy Bell's
The session room. No stage, no bill, no support act: players turn up, take the corner and start, and the etiquette is that you take a dram and stop talking. A session every night from around nine, an earlier one on weekdays about six, two in the afternoon on Saturday, four on Sunday, and extras daily right through August. Steven and Lorraine Hannah run it. The corner went up in 1891 and the drawings show a shop, not a bar. The listing names this room's gantry and settles. Look up outside for the ghost sign: it was the Forrest Hill Bar.
the corner built 1891 as a shop, the interior listed · Mon-Sat noon till 1am, Sun 12.30pm till midnight · verified Aug 2026
a session every night from about nine, an earlier one on weekdays around six, two on Saturday afternoon and four on Sunday
- 5 · The Last Call
The Jolly Judge
We had this wrong, so here is the correction. The seventeenth century painted ceilings on the Lawnmarket are at Gladstone's Land, forty metres east, and the claim walked down the street to us. This building is late Georgian, on a courtyard James Brownhill cleared and squared between 1723 and 1727. There is a painted ceiling and nobody will date it. What is solid: independent under one company since 1991, four rotating casks, six or seven real ciders, and a malt list too long to print. The Monday quiz stops for the Fringe.
a late Georgian room on a 1720s courtyard, independent since 1991 · daily from noon, till 11pm or midnight · verified Aug 2026