LITERARY PUBS: YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE, LONDON

There are a number of pubs in London with Charles Dickens associations, but the one all Dickens fans should visit is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese at 145 Fleet Street.  Not only did Dickens frequent this quaint and atompheric boozer during his time working in the city, but it had a role to play in one of his classics, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, set before and after the French Revolution.  There is a scene in the novel in which two of the main characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, head to a tavern to dine.  Although the tavern is not named, its location on Fleet Street and access ‘up a covered way’ have led to universal acceptance that Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is the inn in question.  The fare on offer is described as “a good plain dinner and good wine”.  I can back this up, based on a visit some years ago, when as far as I can recall I had a perfectly nice Ploughmans at a surprisingly reasonable price for London. 

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Holborn, London. Photo by Adam Bruderer, via Wikimedia Commons.

Charles Dickens is not the only well-known literary figure to have frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.  Others include G. K. Chesterton, Mark Twain, Samuel Johnson, W. B. Yeats and Arthur Conan Doyle.  In 1927 another eminent writer, P. G. Wodehouse, told a friend that he had looked in at the Garrick (presumably either the theatre or the Garrick Arms) at lunchtime, “took one glance of loathing at the mob, and went off to lunch by myself at the Cheshire Cheese”.   

Cheshire Cheese Basement (15815848118). Photo by It's No Game, via Wikimedia Commons.

The original tavern was opened in 1538 on a site which formed part of a 13^th century Carmelite monastery.  Like many of the capital’s inns of the time, it was destroyed by fire during the Great Fire of London in 1666, but was rebuilt the following year.  The authentic atmosphere inside the pub is enhanced by the sawdust on the floor, which is changed twice daily.  As well as the decent pub food, the bar dispenses beers and other drinks bearing the Samuel Smith label.

Map of the area.