It's four o'clock on a Tuesday.
Somewhere in London,
a pub door just swung open.
London has been pulling pints since 1538.
Here's how we got every pub. Four blokes have been walking London since 2003, taking pictures of pubs before the bulldozer turned up. The site they upload to is called closedpubs.co.uk. Between them they have 5,029 photographs.
Add the 3,479 that are still pouring (we got those from OpenStreetMap) and you've got 8,508 public houses. Every one in London. We're not aware of anyone else who's done this.
About two hundred of these will close in the next year. Some of them you'll have drunk in. None of them will go quietly.
♬♫♩♪ In my old worn-out shoes, in the rain and the snow…
A line from 'Streets of London' by Ralph McTell, 1969.
The London
Public Houses
A photographic, linguistic, and spatial census of every pub in London.
Data: closedpubs.co.uk archive, OpenStreetMap, ONS UK Business Counts, Apple Vision OCR.
A short history of London pubs.
Most of the names you'll see in this article come from one of seven eras. Here's a tour of all of them, in order.
Before 1500
Monastic alehouses, Templar lands
London pubs are old. There were alehouses on these streets before there was an England: licensed by parish priests, run out of the back of monastic kitchens, drunk in by pilgrims walking to Canterbury.
The pubs called St James, St Bride, Cross Keys, and Lamb & Flag cluster around the old monastic estates of Clerkenwell, Smithfield, and Holborn for one simple reason: that's where they started.
St Paul's Tavern · Clerkenwell, EC1. Still pouring.
1530s
Henry VIII orders the signs
In the 1530s, Henry VIII began ordering every English innkeeper to fly a sign loyal to the monarch. The Crown is the most common pub name in Britain because it has been since then.
Most of the Crowns you walk past today are older than the buildings they're hanging on. The oldest still-pouring pub in London, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, opened a few years later, in 1538.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese · Wine Office Court, EC4 · est. 1538.
1651
Charles II hides in an oak tree
On 6 September 1651, Charles II spent a day hiding from Cromwell's army inside a hollow oak at Boscobel House, Shropshire. He restored the monarchy nine years later.
For two centuries afterwards, naming your pub The Royal Oak was loyalist code. London has 65 of them. Twenty-four are still pouring.
The Royal Oak · North Woolwich, E16 · green-tiled fascia, boarded.
1700–1830
The trades drank at the trades
The pub closest to where the bricklayers lived was called the Bricklayer's Arms. Plumbers, Carpenters, Coopers, Shepherd. The trade map of London made literal.
By 1700, John of Gaunt's red lion (mandated as a coaching-inn sign by James I in 1603) was the standard fixture of every road out of the city. Red Lion is still the second-most common pub name in Britain.
Bricklayers Arms · Whitechapel, E1 · green tile, closed 2004.
1830–1914
The breweries write their names in stone
The Victorians built thousands of pubs. They also did something new: they engraved the brewery's name above the door. CHARRINGTONS ENTIRE. WHITBREAD ALES. TRUMAN'S FINE ALES & STOUT.
This wasn't decoration. It was a property mark. Each pub was tied to one brewery, sold only that brewery's beer. By 1900 most of London's pubs were tied. You can still read the brewery's name on the side of buildings that haven't been a pub for thirty years.
The Anchor · Poplar, E14 · "CHARRINGTONS ENTIRE" painted on the top fascia.
1914–1989
The Big Six and the break-up
Through the twentieth century the brewing industry consolidated. By 1970, six companies between them owned about three-quarters of all British pubs: Bass, Watney, Whitbread, Allied, Courage, and Scottish & Newcastle. The trade press just called them the Big Six.
In 1989 the UK government's Beer Orders forced them to divest. Most pubs went to chains. Many didn't survive the transition. None of the six breweries exist as breweries today. The brand names that survived (Bass beer, Courage Best) are owned by international conglomerates that don't own pubs.
The Charleston · Stratford, E15 · Charrington-tied · closed 1999.
1990–2026
The Wetherspoons era
JD Wetherspoon opened his first pub in Muswell Hill in 1979 with a useful insight: most British people don't want a curated craft experience. They want a pint of bitter for £3 and somewhere to sit. In 1990 the chain had 18 pubs. Today it has 870.
Meanwhile London keeps losing them. About one a week. The Orange Tree on Green Lanes closed in early 2026. The Laurie Arms in Hammersmith the same month. Forty-eight more went in 2025. The archive in this article exists because four men with cameras have been showing up early.
The Moon Under Water · Leicester Square, WC2 · one of 870 Wetherspoons.
Here are 7,756 of them.
White dots: 3,479 still pouring. Coral dots: 4,277 photographed before they closed. Another 752 are in our archive but couldn't be plotted because their postcodes were too vague to geocode. Zoom in, click any dot.
Map by Google. Eight hundred more closed pubs are in our archive but couldn't be mapped because their postcodes never made it to the database. Browse the full archive →
Let's start with the Crown. Crown, Rose & Crown, Crown & Anchor, Crown & Sceptre: taken together it's the most common pub-name theme in Britain, and has been since Henry VIII told every innkeeper to fly a royal sign in the 1530s.
London has 219 Crown-themed pubs. Eighty-six are still pouring tonight. The other 133 were photographed before they went.
(As an exact pub name, "Crown" comes second to "Prince of Wales" in our ranking. We'll get there.)
219 Crowns, on a map of London.
White dots are still trading. Coral dots have closed. Click any of them.
Loading map…
Click any dot for the pub's name, address, photograph, and (if closed) what the building is now.
The Names
A pub name in London usually means one of four things: a royal (Crown, Duke of York), an animal (Red Lion, White Hart), a trade (Bricklayer's, Carpenter's), or a saint. Most are older than the buildings they're on. Here are the eight patterns that come up most.
Crown
219 mapped · 86 still tradingThe most common pub name in Britain. Most predate 1649, the year Cromwell beheaded Charles I and the Republic ordered royalist signs down. The Crowns that didn't repaint to "Republican Tree" or "Commonwealth Arms" were quiet loyalists; by 1660 most of the names that had changed reverted.
The Crowns you walk past today are the ones that never moved.
Duke, Earl, Marquis
384 mapped · 96 still tradingIn 1603, James I issued a proclamation requiring every inn in England to fly a heraldic sign. The aristocracy obliged: a Duke of York in every parish, a Marquis of Granby on every coaching road, an Earl of Warwick where there had once been an Earl of Warwick.
Most of the men are forgotten. The pubs are not.
The Royal Oak
65 mapped · 24 still tradingIn 1651, Charles II spent a day hiding from Cromwell's army inside a hollow oak tree at Boscobel House. He restored the monarchy nine years later. For two centuries afterwards, naming your pub The Royal Oak was loyalist code.
Forty-two of the sixty-six have closed. Twenty-four are still pulling pints. The Royal Oak on Tabard Street, Borough, has been a Harveys house since 1850 and survived three brewery takeovers, the Blitz, and the smoking ban.
Red Lion
69 mapped · 25 still tradingJohn of Gaunt, fourteenth-century Duke of Lancaster, used a red lion as his heraldic badge. When his great-great-grandson James I demanded universal heraldry in 1603, every coaching inn in England flew the lion. Four centuries later, it's still the second-most-common pub name in Britain.
Twenty-five are still open in 2026. The Red Lion on Parliament Street is so close to the House of Commons it has its own division bell. The MPs walk over.
The Trades
293 mapped · 103 still tradingA Bricklayer's Arms in Bermondsey, where the brickworks were. A Carpenter's Arms in Marylebone, near the cabinet shops. A Plumber's Arms in Pimlico, the lead-workers' parish. A Plough at every parish boundary the agricultural labourers walked to.
The pub was where the trade drank. Where the trade drank is where the pub went.
The Thames
364 mapped · 129 still tradingPubs cluster along the river at roughly four times the city average. The Thames was where the trade was. Coal from Newcastle, hops from Kent, gin from Holland. The watermen who moved it drank within sight of the wharves.
Inland of Cannon Street, the Anchors disappear.
The Chains
729 chain pubs · six landlordsGreene King runs 183. Fuller's runs 153. Stonegate runs 132. Wetherspoons runs 108. Young's runs 78. Sam Smith's runs 9. The remaining 2,400 London pubs are independent.
But it used to be worse. Charrington ran London's east end from 1766 to 1989. Their red C is still on 70 closed shopfronts. The 1989 Beer Orders broke them up.
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130 mapped · 69 still tradingThese pubs cluster around the medieval monastic estates of London: Clerkenwell, Smithfield, Holborn. And around the Knights Templar churches that survived the 1312 papal suppression.
View hint!
The Photos
The maps are useful. The pubs themselves are better. Five photo grids of London pubs you can walk past, photographed before some of them closed.
The X Arms
Bricklayer's, Carpenter's, Plumber's, Mason's, Apothecary's, Shipwright's, Shepherd's, Builder's. The trades map made literal. One sign per craft, on the corner where they drank. Forty-three of them have closed in our archive alone.
Blacksmiths Arms · Poplar
Bricklayers Arms · Poplar
Builders Arms · Poplar · closed 2004
Builders Arms · Poplar
Coopers Arms · Poplar
Builders Arms · Stratford · closed 2020
Gardeners Arms · Walthamstow · closed 1967
Carpenters Arms · Stepney · closed 1999
Bricklayers Arms · Whitechapel · closed 1920
Bricklayers Arms · Whitechapel · closed 2004Bricklayers Arms · Whitechapel
Bricklayers Arms · Bethnal GreenThe Lost Pubs of West London
Eighty-three closures in W1, W10, W11. Each photo shows the pub on its last day of trading. The caption underneath tells you when it went.
Admiral Blake · North Kensington · closed 2012
Bramley Arms · North Kensington · closed 1980
Earl Derby · North Kensington · closed 2011
Flora Hotel · North Kensington · closed 2016
Latimer Arms · North Kensington · closed 1998
The Mitre · North Kensington · closed 1972
North Pole · North Kensington · closed 2012
The Plough · North Kensington · closed 1986
The Apollo · Holland Park · closed 1983
Duke Of Clarence · Holland Park · closed 2001
Duke Of Norfolk · Holland Park · closed 2002
The Star · Holland Park · closed 1998The Last Five Years
Twelve London pubs that closed since 2020. Three of them in 2025. One in 2026. The skip arrived at all twelve.
Orange Tree · Winchmore Hill · closed 2026
Laurie Arms · Hammersmith · closed 2026
Prince Regent · Poplar · closed 2025
King Edward VII · Stratford · closed 2025
Florists Arms · Bethnal Green · closed 2025
Bulls Head · Clerkenwell · closed 2025
Totnes Castle · Upper Holloway · closed 2025
Laurel Tree · Camden · closed 2025
Olde Swiss Cottage · Hampstead · closed 2025
Swiss Cottage · Hampstead · closed 2025
Imperial Arms · Fulham · closed 2025
Blue Lion · WC1 · closed 2025What They Became
Two hundred and four of the pubs in our archive have a note from the photographer saying what the building is now. Most became flats. Some became a Costcutter. One became a Buddhist temple.
Earl Derby · Plaistow · now residential
African Queen · Poplar · now residential
Black Horse · Poplar · now private residential
Crows Nest · Poplar · now residential
Duke Of York · Poplar · now private residential
Jamaica Tavern · Poplar · now a restaurant
Duke Of Edinburgh · Plaistow · now retail
Earl Of Beaconsfield · Plaistow · demolished 2007
Libra Arms · Stratford · now a Costcutter
The Sultan · Plaistow · demolished 2005
Railway Tavern · Stratford · now a convenience store
The Admiral · Poplar · now commercialThe Charrington Empire
Charrington ran London's east-end pubs from 1766 to 1989. Their red C is on the wall of 70 of them in our archive. All closed.
The Volunteer · Poplar · closed 1991
Adam & Eve · Stratford · closed 1994
The Angel · Stratford · closed 2008
Bakers Arms · Stratford · closed 2001The Charleston · Stratford · closed 1999
The Dewdrop · Stratford · closed 2011
Kings Head · Stratford
Lord Henniker · Stratford · closed 2003
Railway Tavern · Stratford · closed 2005
Two Brewers · Stratford · closed 1995
Flying Scud · North Woolwich · closed 1995
Huntingdon Arms · North Woolwich · closed 1986The List
Every pub name in London, ranked. The top is what you'd expect: Crown, Red Lion, King's Head. Scroll past the top twenty and the long tail gets weird.
The Moon Under Water
Wetherspoons runs 108 pubs in London. The chain started with one pub in Muswell Hill in 1979. Today it owns more pubs than any other operator in Britain. Four of them are called The Moon Under Water, named after Orwell's 1946 essay describing the perfect pub. Orwell admitted the pub didn't exist. Tim Martin made it exist, four times, each with the same carpet. (The fourth, not pictured here, is at 1208 London Road in Streatham.)
Leicester Square · WC2H 7LE
Chase Side · Enfield
The Hyde · Colindale · NW9 6RRPhotos: Ewan Munro / Wikimedia Commons (Leicester Sq, CC BY-SA 2.0) · Flickr / Wikimedia Commons (Enfield + Colindale, CC BY-SA 2.0).
The Charrington Empire
Charrington ran London's east-end pubs from 1766 to 1989. Their red C is still painted on 70 of them. All closed. The 1989 Beer Orders forced the Big Six breweries to divest, and Charrington's empire dissolved into a holding company that doesn't exist any more. Watney's, Whitbread, Ind Coope. Same story, same year.
The Volunteer · Poplar · closed 1991Adam & Eve · Stratford · closed 1994The Angel · Stratford · closed 2008Bakers Arms · Stratford · closed 2001The Pub That Changed Its Name
London once had four pubs called The Black Boy. Three closed before 1950. The fourth, The Black Boy & Still in Hampstead, closed quietly. In 2022 a road three miles north, Black Boy Lane in Tottenham, was renamed La Rose Lane by Haringey Council after a five-year campaign by residents. The pub signs went quietly when they went. The streets did not.
Black Boy · Shoreditch · closed 1900
Black Boy · South TottenhamThe Cheshire Chesse
Our pipeline ran Apple Vision OCR on every sign in the archive. Mostly it worked. Sometimes it didn't. The Earl of Beaconsfield's sign came back as CHARPINCTONS PRINGTONS WINES & SPIRITS. The Castle's came back as GARRINGTON'S. The Foresters Arms became THE HOMESTERS ARMS. Every misread is one pub whose sign was already too faded to read in the photograph.
Earl Of Beaconsfield · OCR'd as CHARPINCTONS PRINGTONS
The Castle · OCR'd as GARRINGTON'S
Foresters Arms · OCR'd as HOMESTERS ARMSFilthy MacNasty's
Only one pub in London bears this name. It opened in 1992 on Amwell Street and was named after a song by The Pogues' Shane MacGowan. Pete Doherty wrote half of Up the Bracket in the back booth. It closed in 2014 and reopened in 2018 with the same name.
Filthy MacNasty's · Finsbury, EC1Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
Established 1538. Rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 on the same cellars. Dickens drank here. Yeats drank here. Tennyson drank here. It's still open. It's run by Sam Smith's, the only one of the Big Six breweries that survived the 1989 Beer Orders intact.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese · Fleet Street, EC4 · est. 1538The Last One
The Orange Tree, on Green Lanes in Winchmore Hill, closed in early 2026. The Greyhound in Battersea closed the same month. The Laurie Arms in Hammersmith too. Three London pubs in February alone. Forty-eight more have already gone in 2025. The archive does not stop receiving updates.
Orange Tree · Winchmore Hill · closed 2026Laurie Arms · Hammersmith · closed 2026Prince Regent · Poplar · closed 2025King Edward VII · Stratford · closed 2025Darkstar's Archive
478 of the photographs in this piece are credited to one user: Darkstar. He started uploading to closedpubs.co.uk in 2003. He's still uploading. We don't know who he is. The site doesn't list a real name.
Most of the lost pubs you've scrolled past tonight exist in this article because he was there with a camera, on the morning the carpenters arrived.
Coach & Horses · by Darkstar
Duke Of Edinburgh · by Darkstar
Greyhound & Hare · by Darkstar
Memory Lane · by DarkstarThe wall.
Sixty random London pubs from the archive. Three thousand more where these came from, grouped by decade.
Browse the whole archive →
Here's the thing about pubs. London has more of them than anywhere on earth, and it keeps losing them. About one a week, every week, since 1989. The brewery cartel that broke up that year owned most of them. After the breakup, the chains bought what they could and the rest got turned into flats.
Nobody whose job is to track these closures has bothered to make a complete record of them. Not the breweries. Not the councils. Not the licensing bodies. Not the historians.
This archive of 4,523 photographs exists because four men with cameras have been doing the job nobody paid them to do since 2003. The top contributor's only name on the site is Darkstar. We don't know who he is.
When he stops, the record stops. The pub you walked past today is somewhere in the archive, or it isn't. If it isn't, that's because nobody photographed it in time.
Found a pub we missed? Tell us about it below.