Five rooms between the courts and the old presses, four of them carrying a founding date the statutory record will not confirm. Three are Samuel Smith houses, which means one brewery's beer, no music and no phones out on the table. Two keep lawyers' hours, so do not attempt this on a Sunday.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
Historic England will say only late seventeenth century, very much altered. The 1667 everybody prints, ourselves included, is the pub's own claim and no source anywhere carries it. What the state does certify is a late seventeenth century vaulted cellar under the courtyard, the oldest thing in the building. And Samuel Johnson, whose name is on two of the rooms, has no recorded connection to the place at all: Boswell followed him about for years and never once put him here. A Samuel Smith house, so Old Brewery Bitter out of oak casks, no music and no phones on the table. It trades as a chop house and the famous steak and kidney suet pudding is on its own card at nearly twenty pounds. Order it for the room rather than the cooking, because the eating here is ordinary and saying so out loud is a Fleet Street tradition of its own.
- 2 · The Detour
Ye Olde Mitre
The listing says a tavern here is believed to date from 1546, for the servants at the Bishop of Ely's London house, and believed is the state's own word rather than ours. Then the Crown took the area in 1772 and cleared it, and what stands now went up about 1773. So the tavern is Tudor by tradition and the room is Georgian by record. In the corner is the glazed trunk of what the listing calls a supposed cherry tree, marking the boundary between the Bishop's ground and Sir Christopher Hatton's. Seven real ales on, three of them guests, and a real scrumpy. There is no kitchen to speak of, so the food is home made bar snacks and toasties, which Fuller's own page names and which is the right amount of cooking for a room this size. Shut on Sundays, and hidden down an alley.
- 3 · The Anchor
Cittie of Yorke
The great hall is real and the listing describes it at length: a medieval-style hall with snugs down one side and a gallery on thin cast-iron columns carrying the casks over your head. What is not real is the age. Historic England dates the building to 1923 and 1924, probably by Ernest Barrow, replacing Henekey's wine shop. The pub's own history says 1695 and 1831 and never mentions the twenties at all. The 1430 on the front is an inscription, and the listing quotes it and then notes the building keeps almost no pre-twentieth-century work. It is the third Samuel Smith house on this road, so the beer is one brewery's, and there is no music and no phone on the table. Take a pint into a snug, sit under the barrels, and eat the steak, shin and ale pie at eighteen fifty.
- 4 · The Wildcard
The Seven Stars
The 1602 is carved on the front and that is all it is. Historic England says perhaps seventeenth century, in brackets dated 1602, and CAMRA's own heritage researchers put the building in the 1680s. The Great Fire story wants the same care: the fire never reached Carey Street. It stopped about three hundred metres short at Fetter Lane, which the pub's own site says honestly. Roxy Beaujolais has held the licence in her own name since 2001, so this is a genuine free house rather than a company one. Adnams, and Pilsner Urquell drawn from the cask. Roxy cooks, the menu changes every day on what the pub calls her own pleasure, and it is chalked on a board rather than printed. The Good Pub Guide made this London Dining Pub of the Year for exactly that, so eat whatever is on the board.
- 5 · The Last Call
Princess Louise
Grade two star, and the state upgraded it specifically for the inside: gold embossed glass by Morris, mahogany fittings by Lascelles, four cast-iron Corinthian columns, and a listed gentlemen's lavatory with marble urinals. The interior is 1891 by William Simpson and Sons. One thing to know before you admire them: the screens and booths are not original and are not in the listing, because they had been torn out long before 1973. They went back in 2007, modelled on surviving door panels. Another Sam Smith's house, so no phones, no music, and a pint in a booth of your own. The kitchen is upstairs and nothing downstairs says so, which is how most drinkers miss it: beer battered fish and the same shin and ale pie, Monday to Saturday, lunch and early evening only.