Pubs in Great Britain

The Bingley Arms, Leeds, is claimed to date to 905 AD. Ye Olde Salutation Inn in Nottingham dates from 1240, although the building served as a tannery and a private residence before becoming an inn sometime before the English Civil War. The Adam and Eve in Norwich was first recorded in 1249, when it was an alehouse for the workers constructing nearby Norwich Cathedral.[68] Ye Olde Man & Scythe in Bolton is mentioned by name in a charter of 1251, but the current building is dated 1631. Its cellars are the only surviving part of the older structure.

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Cultural associations

See also: List of public houses in the United Kingdom 

Inns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from The Tabard Inn in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales onwards.[69] 

The highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base.[70] In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876–1957) was the innkeeper of the Spread Eagle in Thame, Berkshire, and published his autobiography: An Innkeeper's Diary (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931).[71] During his idiosyncratic occupancy many famous people came to stay, such as H. G. Wells. United States president George W. Bush fulfilled his lifetime ambition of visiting a 'genuine British pub' during his November 2003 state visit to the UK when he had lunch and a pint of non-alcoholic lager with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield, County Durham.[72]

London 

Many of London's pubs are known to have been used by famous people, but in some cases, such as the association between Samuel Johnson and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, this is speculative, based on little more than the fact that the person is known to have lived nearby. However, Charles Dickens is known to have visited the Cheshire Cheese, the Prospect of Whitby, Ye Olde Cock Tavern and many others. Samuel Pepys is also associated with the Prospect of Whitby and the Cock Tavern. 

The Fitzroy Tavern[73] is a public house situated at 16 Charlotte Street in the Fitzrovia district, to which it gives its name. It became famous (or according to others, infamous) during a period spanning the 1920s to the mid 1950s as a meeting place for many of London's artists, intellectuals and bohemians such as Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, and George Orwell. Several establishments in Soho, London, have associations with well-known, post-war literary and artistic figures, including the Pillars of Hercules, The Colony Room and the Coach and Horses. The Canonbury Tavern, Canonbury, was the prototype for Orwell's ideal English pub, The Moon Under Water. 

The Red Lion in Parliament Square is close to the Palace of Westminster and is consequently used by political journalists and Members of Parliament. The pub is equipped with a Division bell that summons MPs back to the chamber when they are required to take part in a vote.[74] The Punch Bowl, Mayfair was at one time jointly owned by Madonna and Guy Ritchie[75] and is known for the number of present-day celebrities that have patronised it. The Coleherne public house in Earls Court was a well-known gay pub from the 1950s. It attracted many well-known patrons, such as Freddie Mercury, Kenny Everett and Rudolph Nureyev. It was also used by the serial-killer Colin Ireland to pick-up victims.

The Queen Victoria public house, EastEnders, London 

In 1966 The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel became infamous as the scene of a murder committed by gangster Reggie Kray. The Ten Bells is associated with several of the victims of Jack the Ripper. In 1955, Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in the United Kingdom, shot David Blakely as he emerged from The Magdala in South Hill Park, Hampstead,[76] the bullet holes can still be seen in the walls outside. It is said that Vladimir Lenin and a young Joseph Stalin met in the Crown and Anchor pub (now known as The Crown Tavern) on Clerkenwell Green when the latter was visiting London in 1903.[77] 

The Angel, Islington was formerly a coaching inn, the first on the route northwards out of London, where Thomas Paine is believed to have written much of The Rights of Man. It was mentioned by Charles Dickens, became a Lyons Corner House, and is now a Co-operative Bank. It is also on the board in the British version of the board game Monopoly.

Oxford and Cambridge 

The Eagle and Child and the Lamb and Flag, Oxford, were regular meeting places of the Inklings, a writers' group which included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The Eagle in Cambridge is where Francis Crick interrupted patrons' lunchtime on 28 February 1953 to announce that he and James Watson had "discovered the secret of life" after they had come up with their proposal for the structure of DNA.[78] The anecdote is related in Watson's book The Double Helix.[79] and commemorated with a blue plaque on the outside wall.

Television soap operas 

The major soap operas on British television each feature a pub, and these pubs have become household names.[80] The Rovers Return is the pub in Coronation Street, the British soap broadcast on ITV. The Queen Vic (short for the Queen Victoria) is the pub in EastEnders, the major soap on BBC One, while The Bull in the Radio 4 soap opera The Archers and the Woolpack in ITV's Emmerdale are also important meeting points. The sets of each of the three major television soap operas have been visited by some of the members of the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II. The centrepiece of each visit was a trip into the Rovers,[81] the Queen Vic,[82] or the Woolpack to be offered a drink.[83]

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Pubs outside Great Britain

See also: Public houses in Ireland and Australian pubs

Typical "Pub Grub" served at a Portuguese pub in Johannesburg, South Africa 

Although 'British' pubs found outside of Britain and its former colonies are often themed bars owing little to the original British public house, a number of 'true' pubs may be found around the world. 

In Denmark—a country, like Britain, with a long tradition of brewing—a number of pubs have opened which eschew "theming", and which instead focus on the business of providing carefully conditioned beer, often independent of any particular brewery or chain, in an environment which would not be unfamiliar to a British pub-goer. Some import British cask ale, rather than beer in kegs, in order to provide the full British real ale experience to their customers. This newly established Danish interest in British cask beer and the British pub tradition is reflected by the fact that some 56 British cask beers were available at the 2008 European Beer Festival in Copenhagen, which was attended by more than 20,000 people. 

In Ireland, pubs are known for their atmosphere or 'craic'.[84] In Irish, a pub is referred to as teach tábhairne ('tavernhouse') or teach óil ('drinkinghouse'). Live music, either sessions of traditional Irish music or varieties of modern popular music, is frequently featured in the pubs of Ireland. Pubs in Northern Ireland are largely identical to their counterparts in the Republic of Ireland except for the lack of spirit grocers. A side effect of 'The Troubles' was that the lack of a tourist industry meant that a higher proportion of traditional bars have survived the wholesale refitting of Irish pub interiors in the 'English style' in the 1950s and 1960s. This refitting was driven by the need to expand seating areas to accommodate the growing numbers of tourists, and was a direct consequence of the growing dependence of the Irish economy on tourism.[citation needed]

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See also