Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is a London pub rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire, built over 13th-century Carmelite monastery cellars on Fleet Street. The pub hosted literary figures like Charles Dickens and W. B. Yeats, as well as Charlie Chaplin in 1921. Today, Samuel Smith Old Brewery operates the establishment, using an 85-foot well and a yeast strain used continuously since approximately 1900.

London Β· from the walk β€œLast Orders Through the Ages” Β· audio ~3 min Β· Generated

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, 145 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2BU

Who was the famous parrot that lived at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in London?

Look at this narrow alleyway off Fleet Street. You'd walk right past it if you didn't know what was hiding here. But step through that low doorway... and you enter one of the most storied drinking houses in all of London.......... There has been a pub on this very spot since fifteen thirty-eight β€” back when Henry the Eighth was three wives down. That original pub was called the Horn. But like so much of London, it was burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt in sixteen sixty-seven.......... Now, what makes this place special for any beer lover is what lies Beneath your feet. The vaulted cellars are thought to belong to a thirteenth-century Carmelite Monastery which once occupied the site. That's right... monks were storing provisions in these tunnels three hundred years before anyone pulled a pint here. It was the monastery's guesthouse that was perhaps the first incarnation of the pub as somewhere to host visitors.......... Today, the pub is owned and operated by the Samuel Smith Old Brewery β€” an independent brewery based in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, established in seventeen fifty-eight. And here's a detail real ale fans will love: the Cask Old Brewery Bitter is served from oak casks right in the pub cellar. Samuel Smith's is one of the few remaining British breweries to employ a traditional Yorkshire Square fermentation system constructed of Welsh slate, and their brewing water is drawn from the original eighty-five-foot well, sunk when the site was established. Even the fermentation yeast has been used continuously since approximately nineteen hundred β€” one of the oldest unchanged strains in the country!......... But let me tell you about the pub's most Legendary resident. For around forty years, this place was home to an African grey parrot named Polly, who lived in the bar area, shouted out patrons' favourite drink orders when they arrived, and was famous for expletive-laden outbursts and mimicking the popping sound of champagne corks. According to legend, on Armistice Day nineteen eighteen, Polly imitated so many corks popping that he passed out. When customers asked about the Kaiser during the war... well, Polly's reply was decidedly unprintable. And when asked "What will you have?"... the parrot's reply was always "Scotch."

...... Even Charlie Chaplin visited in nineteen twenty-one, tried the famous toasted cheese, and talked to Polly β€” and Polly talked right back.......... When Polly died in nineteen twenty-six, around two hundred newspapers across the world wrote obituaries, and the passing was announced on the radio. Polly was taxidermied and placed under a glass dome overlooking the bar, where it remains to this day. So look for that little grey figure when you step inside.......... And one more thing for the literary pub crawlers among you. The Rhymers' Club, a group of London-based poets founded in eighteen ninety by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys, met right here at the Cheshire Cheese. Dickens wrote scenes set in this very pub. Even Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot dined here β€” in her nineteen twenty-four story, enjoying what she called "the excellent steak and kidney pudding of the establishment."

...... Now go on in... explore those labyrinthine rooms, order yourself a pint of Old Brewery Bitter from the oak cask, and raise a glass to Polly. Cheers!

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